


Une très bonne table dans sa catégorie

by cromarty



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Chefs, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-11
Packaged: 2021-02-26 11:36:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22667347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cromarty/pseuds/cromarty
Summary: “Mr. Miller?” a man said, sliding his vodka soda across the bar to him. Patrick looked up and almost gasped. Possibly the least professional reaction he’s ever had to being served a drink, but he’s not usually served a drink by the head chef himself, and also no other chef is David Rose.OrPatrick is a Michelin Guide reviewer and David is a Toronto chef hoping for the first Michelin star awarded in Canada.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 108
Kudos: 405





	Une très bonne table dans sa catégorie

**Author's Note:**

> I am utterly indebted to Em for her food expertise on this fic, since I am clinically unable to find food appetizing and even before that happened to me I was not an adventurous eater. She designed [the Apothecary menu](https://drive.google.com/open?id=14T89BS95DoNwpLeuqn-cL2E0bvYFbqQK) and provided other valuable insights about working kitchens and addiction. 
> 
> Thanks to Leslie for the beta, and those of you who cheerled this story along from its inception on July 4. 
> 
> Michelin is famously tight-lipped and cultivates an air of mystery around their procedures, so I picked and chose from lots of non-fiction and fiction sources. Also, I am not Dan, so I scheduled out this fic to the day. All the dates work, and I can show you my calendar notes if you’re interested.

**Friday June 30, 2017**

Patrick is just so tired of it all as he sits at the bar at The Apothecary on the last Friday night in June, waiting for his drink. Eastern Canada is the absolute worst Michelin region, the bottom rung of reviewing, and driving from restaurant to restaurant, staying in hotel after hotel, has started to feel completely pointless. 

He used to love food, light up talking about it, geek out over whether you could taste a sous vide preparation lurking under the flavor of a turbot finished on the flame. It used to be exciting. He’d bring Rachel sometimes, and she and Ray would laugh and chat as he’d let a roast potato practically melt on his tongue. 

He used to live for it, but the fact that the office was so reluctant to reward even a single star in the entire country started to wear on him. Coming home exhausted, writing up a report of glorious creations, pristine atmospheres, impeccable service, and filing it knowing that at best the restaurant would get listed on the website made him terrible to live with, apparently. At least, that was one of the things Rachel had shouted at him six months ago when she kicked him out. Some of the others had to do with giving too much time to a job that gave nothing back to him and never being around or having the energy for wedding planning, despite the fact that it had been his idea to get married in the first place. 

He’s still not sure it had been his idea, actually, although he was the one to do the asking, at her favorite of the restaurants they had been to on reviews, this time without Ray. Mostly he thinks it had been his mother, and her mother, saying things like isn’t it lovely that Rachel stuck by him through his stressful job, and didn’t he think it was about time he settle down and stop driving across two provinces every week. 

Once, in the middle of it all, his own mother had asked him if the intense secrecy wore on him, and his brain flashed to Andrew Russell laughing with his head thrown back in grade 10, the boy he saved a seat for every day in Business Law, the bartender he almost had the courage to give his number to in Montreal last month. 

“I mean,” she continued, “it’s a little bit much for them to expect you to leave the region for ten years if you think someone guesses you’re Michelin,” and he had instantly relaxed. That secrecy didn’t bother him at all. That secrecy was like a low stakes version of the fun part of spy movies.

“Mr. Miller?” a man says, sliding his vodka soda across the bar to him. Patrick looks up and almost gasps. Possibly the least professional reaction he’s ever had to being served a drink, but he’s not usually served a drink by the head chef himself, and also no other chef is David Rose. 

Patrick has been following David’s career since he was a high school student working at his local Rose Video and heard that the awkward but eye-catching boy in the employee holiday cards was attending, and then was possibly kicked out of, culinary school. Patrick had always loved food but had grown into only a slightly more adventurous than average home cook, but he kept tabs on David as David’s career took off. It was pretty easy, the paparazzi loved a good society playboy/party boy chef mashup, and David was definitely both of those things. Add to that that he was rarely seen with the same “companion” twice, and they were a varied mix of models and celebrities, women and men, none of whom seemed very private with their physical affection, and Patrick had a wealth of material to skim “just out of casual interest.” 

Then, three years ago, at what seemed to be a new peak of David’s antics, Rose Corp shuttered and David disappeared, presumably to rehab. Patrick had thought about him occasionally, less and less as the years went on without news, but when he heard that David was opening The Apothecary, his heart leapt a little at the announcement. He was _finally_ going to get to try a David Rose creation. Patrick can feel that he is blushing a little, embarrassingly. 

“Thank you, Chef,” he says automatically, and then blushes deeper as David Rose quirks an eyebrow at him. 

“Glad to know my reputation precedes me, I guess.”

“Well, that,” Patrick smiles, recovering a bit, “and your whites are embroidered.”

David glances down at his chest, as if surprised to see his own name picked out in black. Patrick can feel himself starting to smile, watching David’s thick eyebrows knit together, and he takes a larger than advisable drink.

“So, if you don’t mind me asking, what is a chef of your reputation doing serving my drink?”

David twists his mobile mouth to one side and then the other. “It’s important for a chef to occasionally take stock of the reactions his food is getting from his patrons? Critics aren’t the only people who eat here.”

“Ah, I see, you’re here to find out how the little people feel about it? Hoping you’ll overhear a tourist from Chicago say you’ve hit it out of the park?” Patrick smirks. 

“I don’t know what that means, I don’t play cricket,” David says dismissively, and Patrick’s smirk grows into a smile. “Anyway, we have a seasonal menu here at the restaurant you’re enjoying the privilege of dining in tonight, and it _is_ important to gauge reception. A meal can change a life, Mr. Miller.” 

He’s saying it in an exaggeratedly haughty voice, but Patrick can tell David is serious. He takes another drink and gestures for David to go on. “Have you been having a good year?” David asks, and for a second Patrick is taken aback. 

“I... no, I’d say it’s not been one of the better ones I’ve had,” he admits.

David pauses. “That was actually just supposed to be part of the explanation, but why? What’s been so bad about it?” He looks, for a second, like he genuinely wants to know, and Patrick swallows, looking into David’s eyes, and then retreats into the joke.

“Oh no, we’ve just met, Chef. You’re going to have to work a little harder than that to unlock my tragic backstory.” He forces a chuckle, and David smiles and picks up the story again.

“Okay, a meal can come into your life at just the right time, was the point. When Julia Child moved to France with her husband, she didn’t know what to do with her time, and she was struggling with learning French, managing the culture shock, even just living in a country that wasn’t used to six foot tall women. But she had sole meunière one day, at a restaurant near their home, and the purity of the ingredients and simplicity of the preparation helped her fall in love with France, and turned her from someone who loved to eat into someone who was determined to learn to cook French cuisine. It’s one of my personal favorites, too, something I actually cook for myself after a long Saturday night here.” 

He smiles again, a twisted up, guarded smile, and looks out into the dining room. “Sometimes, on long nights, I just come out here to remind myself that I’m not just cooking to cook, I’m cooking with the opportunity to make the meal that changes one of their lives.”

“Wow, Chef,” Patrick breathes out, and David makes a face at the sincerity.

“Also, I miss when I was famous,” he jokes, rolling his eyes, and Patrick laughs. “I mean, it’s nice to occasionally have a guest look up at me in awe when I serve his drink.” 

“Hey, that’s a bit of a stretch,” Patrick starts, trying to defend himself while also trying to wipe the helplessly amused grin off his face.

“David, what are you doing out here?” a woman asks, impatiently, as she appears next to Patrick.

“I was just taking a breather, Stevie, and indulging a fan.” He shoots a smirk at Patrick. 

“Well, if your adoring public can excuse you, George needs you back in there.” She turns to Patrick. “Mr. Miller? The other member of your party has arrived, and has been seated, if you’ll follow me?” Her tone gives Patrick the distinct impression he’s gotten David in trouble.

“Thank you. And thank you, Chef, I look forward to a life-changing meal,” he says, extending his hand for David to shake, and before he can stop himself, he maybe sort of winks at David. He retrieves his hand and turns away immediately to avoid whatever expression is about to cross David’s demonstrative face, and follows the woman to his table.

“Patrick!” Ray is always cheerful and seems excited to see him, despite the fact that they eat together nearly every single night of the week. They shake hands formally, a charade Ray relishes, and Patrick sits. “Now, Patrick, I don’t want to suggest any impropriety on your part,” Ray starts, in warm, curious tones, “but I couldn’t help noticing that you were talking to the head chef. Is everything… alright?” 

Patrick can feel that he’s still smiling a little stupidly and schools his expression. “It’s fine, Ray, he just happened to be at the bar, and I couldn’t exactly not seem like I knew who he was without arousing suspicion. His name is on the door.” 

Their waiter appears, attentive and sunny. She tells them about the specials, and they order a half-bottle of a mid-range wine of her suggestion and tap water, and then take their time over [the menus](https://drive.google.com/open?id=14T89BS95DoNwpLeuqn-cL2E0bvYFbqQK). 

Eventually, Patrick chooses to start with the white asparagus with poached egg, beurre blanc, and white truffle flakes, since their server tells him it’s the last night of the season they’re serving it. She explains that the white asparagus season traditionally ends June 24th, but that David’s supplier reserved fresh stock for him for an extra week because she loves the way he prepares it. 

For his main, he decides on the crispy sea bass with smashed potatoes and preserved lemons, after asking about how closely the kitchen hews to traditional Morroccan lemon preservation. She seems surprised at the question, but Patrick smoothly spins a lie about a business trip, just in case she starts to suspect she’s serving an inspection team. Ray asks for the endive salad and cornish game hen, keeping his questions at a minimum to compensate for Patrick’s curiosity. 

As they wait on their meals, Ray keeps up his usual light chatter while Patrick takes in the details of the room, the look of the dishes going to other tables, and the attentiveness of the servers. Once their dishes come, Ray quiets, the better to make his own mental notes, and Patrick finds himself drifting back to his conversation with David Rose at every bite. 

The asparagus, despite being officially a week out of season, is perfectly delicate, and he’s actually never been much of a fan of white truffle, but the kitchen has balanced the flavors well. The seabass is possibly the best piece of fish he’s ever eaten in his entire career, and as he tries to craft the perfect bite of potato, lemon rind, and fish on his fork, he thinks about David’s face as he talked about changing a life with his food. Did he always want to do that? Is that why he became a chef in the first place? Maybe a meal had changed his own life at some point, but Julia’s was the better story. As they order dessert, he tries not to fantasize about ways he might get to talk to David again, and maybe learn whether he had a story of his own.

After the bill, he shakes Ray’s hand again and says goodnight. When they part outside the restaurant, Patrick turns right instead of left and wanders down the block away from his car. He sometimes walks the neighborhood while he is working out how he wants to write his review, going over details from the night in his mind, but tonight all he is thinking about is David Rose, and how looking at him made him feel like this job is worth the trouble again. He slows almost to a stop thinking about David’s laughing eyes and twisted mouth, his artful stubble and the feel of his hand as he shook Patrick’s. 

“Mr. Miller?” a voice says out of the darkness, and Patrick jumps. “Sorry,” David says, emerging from what must be the restaurant’s service alley. “I was on my smoke break.” 

“You don’t seem to actually be smoking, though,” Patrick says, recovering slightly. His heart is still pounding, but that may be due more to David’s eyes glittering at him out of the darkness and the fact that David had stripped off his chef whites and is only wearing a threadbare white t-shirt in the warm night. 

David spreads his empty hands into a shrug. “2 years, 5 months, and 1 day,” he says. “Nothing but coffee. No alcohol, pills, powders, needles, or cigarettes.” He says it matter of factly, but Patrick doesn’t let him off the hook. 

“That’s impressive, you should be proud,” he says, stepping further into the alley. 

“Thanks,” David says shortly. “Did you enjoy your meal?” 

“Ehhh,” Patrick says, making a so-so gesture with his hand. David squawks indignantly. Patrick laughs, delighted to have produced such a sound. David looms closer, shaking a finger in Patrick’s face. 

“I’ll have you know, I am an _artiste_, and as such, very sensitive to mean jokes about the quality of my work, Mr. Miller. And anyway, what are you, some kind of mid-level businessman? Maybe _you’re_ a tourist from Chicago. What do _you_ know?!” 

Patrick can feel his own back against the wall of the alley now, and David is close enough to touch. In the paparazzi shots, David had a perpetual, practiced, self-satisfied smirk. At some point he had figured out how to arrange his face so that it always looked handsome and like he didn’t care about the attention. Once, Patrick had tried it, looking in a mirror. It looked stupid on Patrick’s face, but on David’s it drew the eye and made him look roguish and sexy. 

David’s mouth is so much sexier in person. His face is only inches away, and Patrick gets a close up view as David rolls his eyes and smiles that twisted up smile Patrick already loves, so much better than the paparazzi smirk, and Patrick can’t help watching his lips, but he can’t lean in. He can tease the object of his longest-running celebrity crush, he can make fun of him in the alley behind his amazing restaurant, but he can’t close this gap. He meets David’s eyes again and wills him to understand how much he’d love to and yet can’t kiss him. Maybe David is a mind reader, because his eyes flicker down to Patrick’s lips and back up, and Patrick holds his breath. He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears, and with every beat he thinks _move, please. Closer, please_.

“David,” he breathes out in a whisper, and David leans back.

“Well,” he says, quietly, taking one step away. “Maybe it wasn’t life-changing, but I hope I did whatever sports thing you said in there, anyway.”

Patrick smiles at him warmly. “Chef, it was one of the best meals of my entire life. Thank you.” 

David blinks, and his mouth goes serious. He leans a few aching inches closer. Something finally unlocks in Patrick and he surges forward, and they are kissing. He is kissing David Rose, with the taste of his impeccable plum tart on his tongue, and he thinks his heart might burst out of his chest. David’s hand is wrapped around his face, and he can feel his fingers in the short hair on the back of his neck, his thumb brushing Patrick’s ear. David pulls back and Patrick gasps a bit. 

“Thank you,” he says, breathlessly. 

“For what?” David asks. 

“I’ve never done that before, with a man, so thank you for making that happen for us. I was a little scared I was going to let you go back to your kitchen without doing that, and I really wanted to.” David’s face is still warm, but has closed down slowly as Patrick talked. 

“2 years, 5 months, and 1 day,” he says quietly, still holding Patrick’s head cradled in his large, scarred hand. “881 days of no alcohol, pills, powders, needles, cigarettes, men, or women, actually.” Patrick smiles gently, still impressed. “So, you’re welcome, but I shouldn’t have….” David takes his hand away and turns back towards the kitchen door. “I think, what I actually need in my life, right now, Mr. Miller, is friends, not distractions.” Patrick’s body turns cold, and he stands up away from the wall. 

“David,” he starts, but David just says “I’m glad you enjoyed your meal, Mr. Miller,” and starts to walk away. 

“It’s Patrick,” he calls. “Good night, David.” 

“Good night, Patrick,” David says quietly, finally turning back to look at him with a bit of a rueful smile. 

Patrick goes home and writes the most thorough report he’s ever turned in to the company. David Rose is doing Michelin star work and he deserves to have it acknowledged. He thinks about calling Ray to ask about his own report, but he’s never done that in the history of their partnership, so he knows Ray will think it’s strange. He spends all night on it, writing and rewriting, trying to find the perfect adjectives. At 3:30am he submits it, and then throws on his luckiest pair of jeans and heads back out into the dawn.

He goes straight to the fish market, weaving his way through vendors, asking about sole so often he thinks he might get gutted with a fish knife before he finds David. Finally, he sees him, leaning against a pallet waiting for his pick-up, and twisting large silver rings around his fingers, staring at the floor. Patrick walks up and says, “Good morning, David.” 

David’s head snaps up and he looks immediately wary. “Are you stalking me?”

“No. Well, yes, I guess, I did come here looking for you because you told me about the sole. But mostly, I am here to tell you that I can—I want to—be your friend, and not a distraction. I’m a… consultant, for a company in Montreal, so I travel a lot, but if you’ll let me, I’d like to be your friend.” 

David still looks suspicious, but also a sort of bone-deep exhausted that feels familiar to Patrick. “A consultant. Does that mean you know, like, businessy things? Like, maybe restaurant businessy things?”

Patrick tries not to smile too widely. “Yes, I know ‘businessy things.’ I was a business major, actually, and I had a concentration in restaurant management because I always loved food, but I ended up going a different direction. Do you need help? With the restaurant?” He can hear the hope in his own voice.

“Well my partner is… not a strong business woman, and actually sort of ran her last restaurant into the ground. And I don’t have much, after that and other things, but I can handle the creative side. But if you’re offering to be my friend, I could use some friendly help with the books. It might help with some of the usual 4am thoughts.” 

Patrick turns to lean against the pallet beside David. “What are your usual 4am thoughts?” he asks.

“Oh no, you’re going to have to work a little harder than that to unlock my tragic backstory,” David jokes, nudging Patrick’s shoulder with his own. Patrick laughs and lets him off the hook. 

They talk easily for another few minutes before David’s fish is ready, and walk slowly out of the market to catch their cabs. Between the restaurant and the market, Patrick feels like he’s laughed more tonight than he has in the last year. He smiles shyly at David as he holds his cab door open for him. “I’ll see you Monday morning, David.”

“Mmm, okay, but also we’re closed Mondays, so Monday mornings don’t exist for me. What about, like, late Monday afternoon?” David’s smirking, but he’s obviously serious. 

“See you Monday afternoon, David.” Patrick agrees, and tries not to grin too obviously as he closes the cab door. 

***

**Monday, July 3, 2017**

That first Monday, Patrick arrives at 4pm, trying not to seem too eager. He had thought about David all Canada Day weekend, and used the hours he wasn’t eating at other Toronto restaurants or ignoring the fireworks to brush up on his restaurant management and try to avoid Googling David. He made it until Sunday morning, which he thought was pretty good, before reading everything he could find on David before his dramatic departure from public life. David’s partner, Wendy Kurtz, seemed sort of odd from the few interviews he could find, and it made Patrick wonder why David had partnered with her in the first place, and whether she was possibly the only person willing to take a risk on a David Rose restaurant now. 

David meets him in the same alley entrance and shows him to the office and his records. They talk a little bit about what David knows about the business, but when Patrick realizes the answer is “not much,” he decides to get down to it and David leaves him to his own devices. Patrick resurfaces around 7:30, when David places a plate on the edge of the desk and says, “you should get reading glasses, you’re squinting.”

“It’s more because I’m baffled by your business’s ability to keep from going under than because I can’t see, but thanks for the concern,” Patrick replies, and decides not to admit that he has a headache and David is almost definitely right. 

“Well I’m sure you’ve seen I can’t pay you whatever exorbitant rate a ‘consultant’ charges, so I did this instead.” David nudges the plate towards him, and Patrick realizes it’s the sole meunière.

“Thank you, wow,” he says, “you didn’t have to do that, I could have gotten myself something.”

“First of all, I, obviously, enjoy cooking, so it’s not like it was a hardship. Secondly, I cannot believe that you think it’s a _nice_ thing to say to me that you’d rather I hadn’t gone to the trouble because you could have eaten somewhere else!” He throws his hands up, and Patrick tries not to laugh, but David Rose indignant is fast becoming his favorite David Rose.

“I’m sorry, how thoughtless of me. Thank you, David, from the bottom of my heart, for gracing me with another product of your culinary expertise.”

David crosses his arms and huffs. Patrick looks him in the eye and lets the teasing drop a bit. “It is truly an honor and a privilege to eat a David Rose creation,” he says, watching David soften a bit under the praise. “Now, if only I could eat it at an actual table….”

“Okay!” David shouts, and picks the plate up and stalks back out to the kitchen. Patrick follows him, trying not to enjoy the view of his broad, square shoulders and trim waist under another artfully distressed t-shirt. David yanks a chair out from the table closest to the kitchen door and deposits the plate. His body language makes it seem like he’s annoyed enough to slam it down, but he gentles his placement at the last moment so as not to jostle his careful plating, and Patrick has to rub at his mouth to keep his grin from being too obvious as David steps aside so Patrick can take the chair. David marches over to the server station to get him a napkin and silverware and then places himself primly down into the chair opposite, apparently planning to watch Patrick eat. 

The sole fillet is perfect, and it doesn’t take very long for Patrick to finish it, even though he’s making a conscious effort to savor it. He closes his eyes on the first bite and doesn’t reopen them. In the empty restaurant, it’s easy to focus entirely on the light taste of the sole, butter, capers, and tang of lemon, and truly appreciate the unimaginable excellence just those simple ingredients can turn into in David’s alchemical hands. He can also hear David breathing, just a few feet away across the table, and it’s both the taste and the sound that make him smile as he finally opens his eyes. 

“Acceptable?” David asks, tartly, but his eyes are giving him away even as he tries to make his mouth twist in annoyance. 

“I have a much greater understanding of Julia falling in love, definitely,” Patrick says, heart kicking a bit at the unintended truth of it as he watches David preen theatrically in response to the praise. 

“Well, you’ll just have to be as good as you claim to be about the business side so I can keep buying the good butter,” David responds, and makes Patrick’s heart problem worse by reaching across the table to dip his finger into the melted butter still on Patrick’s plate and licking it off his finger.

“Uh… yeah, will do.” He shakes himself mentally. “So my work schedule is sort of untraditional, I work in Montreal one week, then Toronto the next, then have a week where I can be flexible and work most of my hours from home. I’m always off Mondays, though, like you, if you want me to come by mostly then.”

David steals Patrick’s napkin to wipe off his hands, pursing his lips and nodding. “Most Mondays should be fine. If you feel like, once you’ve gotten into the books, you need to be here more, you can come in the mornings. I’m usually up for deliveries and sometimes shopping at 4 and then go back to bed if I can, but I can give you an office key if you want to work before the staff starts trickling in for lunch service. George is usually first, around 11:15.”

“Great, sounds like a plan.” All of a sudden Patrick feels awkward, like the easy flow of conversation they’ve managed Friday night and today has completely dried up. Is it the work schedule they just sketched out, or how much he’s still thinking about David’s finger in his mouth, covered in butter sauce? He wishes he had a watch to check, but he’s just wearing a button down, and he rolled the sleeves up as soon as he started working like he always does, so he can’t even pretend he has a watch. He’d just look like an idiot glancing at his obviously naked arm. 

“Well,” David says, reaching out for the plate and starting to stand. “That’s settled, I guess? Do you need to finish anything up?”

“Oh, no, I was at a stopping point, I can put everything away and let you get back to your evening,” Patrick says, hurrying to stand as well, half relieved and half disappointed. He packs up his notes while David cleans the kitchen and then follows him out to the alley. It’s still light, which feels strange, like much more time should have passed, but it’s only 8:15. David locks the door and then lingers. _Three days ago you kissed me up against that wall_, Patrick thinks, and keeps thinking, on a loop, until the pause has gotten awkward again. He sticks out his hand for David to shake.

“Thank you for the meal, Chef. I’ll see you Monday?”

“Mmhmm, Monday.” David gives him a small smile, so Patrick turns away towards the mouth of the alley before he can stand there staring at it too long and make everything uncomfortable. _I’m his friend, and his management consultant. I’m his friend, I will not make this weird_, he thinks.

***

**Monday, July 24, 2017**

By the fourth Monday, they have a bit of a routine down. Patrick shows up around 10am and gets in some work before David arrives. David makes him lunch, which they eat together as they discuss the business. Wendy, it turns out, gave David his first job out of culinary school, in a terrible restaurant that very quickly went under due to being completely unfashionable, and her soft spot for him, along with her divorce settlement, led to her financing this second chance venture. David has gently steered her into being a completely silent partner, since she has none of his creative abilities and none of her ex-husband’s business sense. 

They discuss David’s seasonally rotating menu, his insistence on the dining room’s sand and stone color palette, and the suppliers he likes to use. Sometimes David steers the conversation to Patrick, but it’s mostly things like his restaurant management classes or his hometown, and lots of joking comparisons between Patrick’s conventional upbringing and David’s wild youth. David never asks any more questions about his job, and Patrick relaxes into the relief of not having to make up a more concrete lie. 

The fourth Monday, one of David’s jokes, a self-deprecating one about dating someone who left him for a stuffed animal, leads him to ask a more direct question about Patrick’s own dating history than he has so far, and Patrick feels his palms start to sweat against the counter he’s leaning on, even though David has been nothing but interested and non-judgmental during their whole acquaintance. It’s hard to talk about, still, the fact that he let himself get this far in life without figuring out a way to reconcile his thoughts about men with the rest of who he is. He pushes through the nerves anyway.

“It, uh, it took me a long time to understand myself, my… preferences.” Patrick keeps his eyes on the counter in front of him, even though David’s back is turned as he makes them lunch.

“You didn’t know what you liked?” David seems surprised.

Patrick tries to explain, sort of embarrassed he hasn’t figured out a way to articulate this in his head in case this question came up. “With food, I like everything,” he starts. “I like trying and tasting, I don’t have to think about it. I appreciate the craftsmanship, the novelty, the artistry, even if I don’t like the flavors, but what makes or breaks a dish for me is how I feel when I’m eating it. I just didn’t really apply that to my own life.” He glances up, but David is still turned away, stirring.

“Food was easy, everything else was hard. I wasn’t adventurous in any other area of my life. I… this metaphor is getting sort of labored, but it’s like I learned to eat in my parents’ house and never tried any other food? I just assumed what I liked about that food was what there was to like, but then I finally admitted to myself that I wanted to… taste other cuisines?” He can feel that he’s blushing, and he is so glad David is still turned around. It suddenly occurs to him that David might still be turned around to give Patrick the space to say this without David’s eyes on him, since he’s barely stirring the pot in front of him.

“But you haven’t… sampled… widely, right? Unless you have, since…” David says, glancing over his shoulder. _Since I kissed you and then told you I shouldn’t have_, Patrick’s brain fills in. As if this conversation wasn’t awkward enough. 

“Oh, um, this is where the metaphor breaks down, I guess?” Patrick’s face is on fire, but if David wants to know, Patrick has to tell him. “Because you can kind of figure out what you like without… other people… participating? No one has to cook for me to realize when my mouth waters.” He grimaces at having said that, but he can see even from behind that David has started to smile that half-hidden twisted-up smile of his. “This is possibly the most ridiculous conversation I’ve ever had in a place of business,” Patrick admits, smirking a bit at David as he finally turns back around. 

“Sorry, it’s just hard for me to understand because I’ve… sampled… widely, everything, everywhere, food and people and drugs and self-destructive impulses.” David pulls a grimace of his own.

“We don’t have to talk about this, if you don’t want to,” Patrick says immediately. 

“No, I don’t mind. It was hard, of course—‘it was hard’ is actually a sort of ridiculous, laughable understatement.” 

David busies himself for a minute, turning down the burner and switching to the counter in front of Patrick.

“It’s better now,” he says, just when Patrick was thinking about speaking up to fill the silence himself, and as he starts to slice a lemon into paper-thin sheets, “but at first it feels completely impossible because you’ve rewired your brain. I literally broke it, and then I asked it to work again, and that took... a while. It’s going to take forever, actually.”

Patrick nods. “Yeah, I’ve heard the thing about always being recovering and never recovered before, but I didn’t really stop to think about what it means.” 

“I mean, it means it’s inevitable that I will fail,” David says nonchalantly.

“David—”

“No, it is. It’s like how everyone’s going to die. All addicts are addicts forever, and someday, maybe soon, maybe in 10 years, I’ll use again. That’s the whole ‘one day at a time’ thing. One more day of not-failure, one more day closer to failure.” He shrugs. 

Patrick can feel his own frown, but he just keeps his mouth shut. Even if David isn’t giving himself enough credit, he’s not going to start because Patrick tells him he thinks he’s wrong. And what does Patrick really know about anything, let alone addiction?

“I guess to most people that’s what sounds like the bigger deal,” David says, not looking at Patrick. “But for me, the bigger deal is this part, the coming into work every day, and, like, figuring out how to do this without the safety net of family money, and how to make sure that I don’t crash and burn, not even for me, but for my staff.”

He looks up and starts to gesture before remembering to put down the knife he’s holding. “It’s just, the restaurant industry is nuts. It’s full of intense people doing exhausting jobs, and expectations about the lifestyle that’s supposed to go along with a career that seems glamorous. The culture is changing, sort of, but when I was coming up in kitchens everyone was on drugs, all the time. It wasn’t just because I came from a rich family.”

He sighs. “This restaurant isn’t just my second chance. It’s Wendy’s, like, fifth chance, but that’s just because she’s kind of terrible at choosing partners, in business and in her personal life. It’s George’s second chance too. He learned to cook in a prison program because he didn’t have rich parents to keep him out of jail after his benders. I have a lot of staff who are addicts.”

David crosses his arms and looks increasingly uncomfortable, and Patrick already knows, only a few weeks into this, that that means he’s about to say something truly sincere. David does not disappoint.

“You know, that first night, I said the thing about Julia Child? It’s probably that no one in that dining room eating our food has felt like their meal changed their life, I’m not actually arrogant enough to think that happens here, but it doesn’t really matter, because my staff is full of people who got lives back because of food. So.”

He seems to have reached his limit, and shrugs dramatically, head tossed back and eyes closed. Patrick takes the opportunity to smile unguardedly at his new, sort of unbelievably nice friend, and then reaches for the joke.

“David, I understand. I have a serious question, though.” 

“Ugh, okay, what,” David asks, telegraphing his reluctance to handle seriousness or sincerity with his whole body.

“When is lunch going to be ready, because I am starving, and since this is my only compensation, it’s kind of important.” 

David scoffs and picks the knife back up. “You think you’re funny, but I have to tell you, you are actually wrong about that.”

“David, please, I might faint, honestly. I am so hungry, I might have to go lie down in the office. Wait, no, I have to go edit my Yelp review. ‘Good food, slowest service I have ever—”

“Oh my _god_!” David groans, but his amused eyes are giving him away, as usual.

***

**Wednesday, August 2, 2017**

David texted while Patrick was in Montreal the last week of July to tell him to come in on Wednesday instead of Monday when he got back. For a second, Patrick was disappointed he’d have to wait two extra days to go back to the restaurant, but then he firmly reminded himself that he is not supposed to be making this weird, and got over it. 

When he arrives at 10, the front of house manager is standing in the kitchen playing a game on her phone, and David is nowhere to be seen. She looks up and squints at him, appraisingly.

“Ah, the mysterious Patrick, who’s worked here for a month but who I’ve never seen and heard extremely little about,” she says, almost accusatory.

“Stevie, right?” Patrick asks, and she nods. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“None of it is true,” she assures him.

“Actually, all of it is true. I wouldn’t lie about anything so tragic,” David says from behind him. 

“See, you say that, but I happen to know you’ve lied about lots of tragic things. Like, Patrick, has David told you that when he was in high school he had this, like, it stuck up in the back like a hedgehog but then there were bangs, in the front, and—” She’s using both hands to illustrate, fingers splayed. 

“Alright, no one needs to hear about fashion choices of the past. I’m sure you made some _pretty_... courageous choices of your own. I mean, maybe not Patrick.” David looks him up and down obviously, to highlight his standard uniform of button down, jeans, and dress shoes. 

“Actually, David, you’re right, I had very normal hairstyles in high school, it was either short or longer. Not short _and_ longer at the same time, which apparently was the _very_ fashion-forward choice _you_ made—”

“Mmkay we’re done with this. You’ve met Stevie, which I can now see was definitely a mistake. Please go wait in the dining room so you can meet everyone else and you’re too far away to egg each other on, because this was fun for me, definitely, but I’d like it to end, now,” David says, while literally shooing Patrick and Stevie into the dining room with his arms flapping.

Patrick manages to meet everyone as they come in, from George all the way down to the dishwashers, and most of Stevie’s servers. He’s not sure he’s got everyone’s name, even though he pulled out all the standard B-School tricks like “meet and repeat.” As everyone starts to prepare for service, he heads back towards the office to get out of the way, but he stops just outside the slightly ajar door because he can hear David inside.

“I’d rather you stay out of the kitchen and deal with your own area, because I have too much work to do back here to have you two making me feel attacked by way of an imbalanced social dynamic. And anyway, he’s mostly going to be coming in Mondays, so.”

No one answers, for a minute, but then Patrick hears Stevie.

“I like him. I _like_ this for you.” Patrick feels his face heat. He should really clear his throat or knock or something.

“Like _what_? There’s nothing to like. We're in business together, and complement each other professionally. He’s going to make sure I can keep paying you. You can like that,” David says quickly.

“You seem flustered, David.” Patrick can hear the tease in her voice.

“Okay, get out of my office, go handle your stuff, I have to get ready. Get out.” David’s voice is getting closer, so Patrick backs up quickly and tries to act natural as they open the door.

“Hey! It was great to finally meet you, Stevie,” he says, offering his hand. She shakes it with a gleam in her eye that should probably make him nervous. 

“You as well, Patrick,” she intones formally. “Oh, and David was telling me you usually come in Mondays, but if you’re going to be consulting you should really learn more about David’s day to day.” She raises her eyebrows significantly. Behind her, David’s eyes are closed, and he’s very slightly shaking his head, like he’s trying to pretend none of this is happening.

“That would be great, actually. I’m not sure I can come in other than Monday for the next two weeks, but when I get back from my next Montreal trip, I would definitely like to learn more about David’s day to day.” Patrick watches David’s eyes pop open.

“Okay, yep, great idea, Patrick can follow me around carrying things for me, that definitely sounds like what I hired him for. Now can we please get out of this doorway and go actually do _our_ jobs?” he says, and pushes Stevie past Patrick out into the kitchen. 

***

**Thursday, August 24, 2017**

They are in Montreal again, and Ray keeps trying to get Patrick to practice his mediocre French and teasing him about how much Patrick hates the warm, muggy late August weather. Patrick never would have guessed when they were assigned to each other, but he thinks over the last few years Ray has become his best friend. 

He thinks about David and Stevie, how their humor complements each other and the love you can hear when they talk to each other, even when they are mocking or yelling at each other. He and Ray don’t fight, but having dinner with someone 15 nights every month and still liking each other four years later feels like a gift. If he and David could be as good friends four years down the line, Patrick would consider it a crowning achievement. He can feel his face go fond, thinking about David, and isn’t surprised when Ray switches topics mid-sentence. 

“...which is what she had been telling me all along—oh, Patrick, you’ve been very quiet at our dinners these last few weeks, but not in the way you were this spring. Has something new and exciting been happening in your life?” He’s grinning the classic Ray Butani grin, honestly delighted that Patrick might be happier, and Patrick smiles more fully and ducks his head to look down at his plate.

“I… it’s very new, and nothing has really happened yet, but I might have met someone, sort of,” Patrick admits. 

Ray beams at him, and then, gesturing to him to go on, glances around the room and leans down to place his fork on the floor next to his chair. This is a standard Michelin test of the service staff. Patrick thinks it’s a bit much, since they can tell how good the staff is without resorting to tricks, but Ray relishes the little bits of gimmicky tradecraft the Michelin head office encourages. 

Patrick thinks about what he wants to say next about David. He probably shouldn’t mention who he is, or even that he’s a chef. He wouldn’t want to put Ray in a position of worrying about whether he needs to report an ethics violation or favoritism or something. _And he is definitely my favorite_, Patrick thinks. 

He decides to come at it another way. “I know we haven’t ever talked about this, Ray, but one of the reasons Rachel and I aren’t together anymore is that… well….” He’s never said this out loud, and he wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult. Ray is cheerfully nodding. Patrick takes a breath. “I’m actually gay, I think. No, I know. Mostly.” 

“Oh, how lovely, Patrick! Thank you for letting me know. This someone, then, I assume, is a young man?” Patrick blows out the breath he was unconsciously holding and smiles back at Ray.

“Yes, he is. He’s.…” He has to pause, because what can he even say that captures David? “He’s amazing. He’s funny, and sharp, and so totally himself. He… we’re friends, just friends, but I’ve never had a friend like him before.”

“Well. Speaking as someone who is also your friend, Patrick, I am sure he’s a very lucky man to have met you. And if you decide to confirm that you aren’t actually ‘just friends,’ I’m sure that will go well.”

“Thanks, Ray,” Patrick says, but he feels a little prick of guilt. Ray is right, no matter how many times he says they’re ‘just friends,’ he hasn’t been doing a very good job of putting David into the ‘friend’ box in his mind. It’s like he thinks saying they’re friends gets him off the hook for all the things he thinks about David, and David’s smirking mouth, and David’s large and dexterous hands, in the privacy of his own mind, which it definitely doesn’t. He needs to respect David’s wishes and get his raging crush under control. _I’m his friend, and his management consultant. I’m his friend, I will not make this weird_, he thinks, for the thousandth time.

***

**Thursday, August 31, 2017**

Since Patrick is supposed to be “learning more about David’s day to day,” he comes in every day of the last week of August. He doesn’t ever stay the whole 14 or so hours David does, but he does get to follow a bleary-eyed David around the market very early on Tuesday, pulling his cart for him, and see a tired but happy David doing a final counter wipe down at nearly midnight on Wednesday. Thursday, David takes him to meet his bread supplier.

Ronnie is no nonsense in a kind of scary way, and though she greets David warmly enough, when he introduces Patrick as his “business manager” and Patrick corrects him to “business consultant,” she looks distinctly unimpressed. She gets even more unimpressed when Patrick points at her Blue Jays hat and says, “you’re a baseball fan? Me too!”

“Do I not look like a baseball fan, or something?” she deadpans, and he decides to maybe shut his mouth and let David handle things. They’re picking up the weekend order, but David has also mentioned he needs to have a word with her about the quality of the molasses bread he’s been adding to the bread baskets on a trial basis the last few weeks. 

As they get into it, Patrick leans back against the cart and just watches David, hands flying and those silver rings he wears whenever he’s not cooking catching the light. David’s hands are beautiful, and not just when he’s showing off his knife skills. Every gesture, every twist of a spoon through a sauce, and every moment he stands with them braced on his hip as he teases Patrick about being a numbers nerd from the doorway of the office draws Patrick’s eye. He tries very hard not to think about how David’s hands would feel on his body, but he doesn’t always succeed, and he feels very guilty about that. Plan “crush control” hasn’t been going well so far.

He’s startled out of his hands-induced trance by his own name. 

“It just doesn’t make sense for me, financially speaking, Ronnie! And Patrick will back me up on that,” David says, crossing his arms firmly to match Ronnie’s.

“Okay, ‘business consultant,’ now’s your chance to consult for your boss and tell him he’s crazy not to add my sourdough to his order,” she says, pinning Patrick in place with a shark-like glare.

“Uh…” he stalls, wracking his brain for the details of David’s bread orders. “That would be on top of the current order, including the molasses bread?” David’s nodding, helpfully, but Ronnie scoffs.

“Does ‘add my sourdough to his order’ mean something different in the world of big restaurant business management consulting? Look, David, maybe you should talk it over once you’ve caught your guy up, but you’re going to decide you’re making a mistake. You get your bread from me because you know I know bread better than you do, so I’ll just be here, knowing everything there is to know about bread, when you call to change your order. See ya then, Dime Bag.” She rolls her eyes at Patrick and walks back into her kitchen, leaving them standing at the counter with no bread at all.

“Yikes. Thanks for that, she’s so not a fan of you she’s not even a fan of me anymore,” David grimaces. 

“Sorry. I was distracted, I should have been more on top of the bread order. Um… can I ask, what did she call you?”

David rolls his eyes. “Ugh. ‘Dime Bag.’ Sometimes the more colorful tabloid ‘journalists’ liked to call me ‘David “Dime Bag” Rose,’ before. Some of them even _cleverly_ shortened it to ‘D-bag,’ which I’m sure they found _very_ amusing. Ronnie likes to remind me of it when she’s particularly annoyed with me.”

“That’s… kind of cruel, David,” Patrick says, trying not to overreact, but really kind of intensely offended on David’s behalf. He’s _years_ sober, and someone he works with throws his former life in his face regularly?

David just shrugs. “She loves me and I pay her, she’ll get over it. And it’s hardly the worst thing I’ve been called. Although honestly, at the time, I was buying in a little more volume than the name gives me credit for.”

“David,” Patrick starts, but David cuts him off to call over one of Ronnie’s employees.

“Hey, Ivan, can we get our order? And can you put a few sourdough loaves in with it? Tell your boss, when she’s done being cranky, that I’ll try it and get back to her.”

They don’t discuss the bakery visit the rest of Thursday, but Patrick thinks about it all day. He thinks about how good David is, now, how careful to care for his staff, and make sure the ones who need to have time to get to meetings. He thinks about how often David goes to meetings, which he’s mentioned occasionally in the last two months, and how difficult it must be to be in the high pressure environment of the kitchen, with all those people counting on him. Finally, on Friday morning, he decides to say something, while they’re alone in the morning before George arrives.

“Ronnie shouldn’t call you that, David, when she’s annoyed with you,” he says, out of the blue, when David comes in to ask whether he wants lunch soon. “It’s cruel to throw your past in your face.”

David smiles at him indulgently. “It’s really fine, Patrick. I realize you haven’t made any mistakes big enough to get a press nickname, but it kind of loses its teeth when you see it in print like a thousand times over the course of years. But I guess it’s hard to explain to someone who’s never had an unflattering nickname.”

“I’ve had my fair share of stupid nicknames, David,” Patrick says, rolling his eyes and trying to decide whether to tell this story. 

“Right, I’m sure there were lots in your truly idyllic childhood. Did you get called ‘Patty’ and not like it or something?” David is smirking at him from the doorway.

“How much do you know about baseball?” Patrick asks, thinking about high school and trying to frame this in his head as a funny story David will like.

“Um, I’ve heard there are pitchers and catchers? And, uh, bases you can get to, and… positions, and the pants are tight and the butts are good.” David says, raising his voice to a breathier, campier version of his normal voice to highlight the joke. 

“Well don’t get too excited, but I was a catcher in high school, an excellent one, actually.”

“Oh of course, I require nothing less than excellence in my staff,” David says, smirking again.

“I’m not your staff, David, I’m a consultant, I keep telling you, I am my own boss. Anyway, in baseball sometimes players on the hitting team try to steal second base while the pitcher is pitching, and the catcher has to catch the ball while standing up from his crouch and throw to second as hard and as accurately as possible to try to give the second baseman a chance to tag the runner out.” Patrick only realizes he’s unconsciously stood and is sketching out his movements because of the look on David’s face watching him. He just grins back at David and keeps talking.

“So in this one game, this super fast guy was on first, and I was sure he was going to go on the next pitch, so I gave my pitcher the sign for a pitchout, which is when they pretend to pitch but really throw it in a way that makes it easier for the catcher to throw to second. So we do the pitchout and the runner is fast, but I’m faster, so I throw it right to the second baseman, who’s already reaching out to tag the sliding runner, and I hit the runner right… well.” He gestures, and David gasps a laugh. 

“And he was an outfielder, and they don’t usually wear jockstraps, so he just got [drilled](https://twitter.com/Ben13Porter/status/1162099977801338885). I felt kind of bad, actually, but my team _loved_ it, and they called me…”

Patrick pauses to see if David will guess, but he’s still just grinning at Patrick from the doorway.

“David, they called me ‘Boner Killer’ for the rest of high school.”

David immediately lapses into giggles. “Boner Killer Miller?! That’s supposed to be embarrassing? That’s perfect!”

Patrick feels his whole body go cold. He’d forgotten, again, that David doesn’t know his real name. He feels even worse than he thought he would, telling this stupid, funny version of the story. He thought he’d have to edit how embarrassing he found the nickname, how he thought of it every single time he thought about flirting with a guy, how teenage Patrick had folded it into his heart the way teenage Patrick took on every tiny piece of criticism in a way he’s still trying to shake off, and he didn’t even consider how dangerous telling David bits of his past would be because of his job.

He’s still standing next to the desk, so he pats his pockets and then grabs his phone to check the time. “Hey, uh, sorry, I completely forgot, I have a meeting this afternoon, with… a client, and I should go. I’ll see you Monday?”

David looks surprised and confused, but he nods. “Yeah, right, Monday. No, wait, not Monday, you said not Monday because of Labour Day?” 

“Oh. Right. Okay, um, I can come in some other day. I’ll text you, I guess. I really have to… I’m gonna go.” Patrick pats his pockets again and escapes past David. 

Once he’s out in the alley, he leans against the wall and breathes out the panic. Maybe he should just tell David. His review was turned in months ago, it’s not really a conflict of interest any more. Michelin probably won’t like him working for David on the side, but he’s basically volunteering, what can they do, fire him? They might fire him, actually. As much as he hates his job, Patrick has to admit being fired would be bad. He breathes slowly again, touching the brick at his back, and then pushes off the wall to go home, to sit in his apartment and wish he was at the restaurant with David instead of his fake client meeting. 

***

**Thursday, September 14, 2017**

Patrick has to drive the six hours to Montreal today, but he and Ray don’t have a lunch scheduled, so he shows up at the restaurant at 8:30am and is shocked to see David moving swiftly around the kitchen with George and Twyla.

“Oh thank god!” David gasps when he sees Patrick. “You have to go get the bread!” 

“Uh, what? What’s going on in here?” Patrick steps into the office doorway to get out of Twyla’s way as she rushes past with a chipper “Hi, Patrick!”

“Richard’s truck got t-boned on it’s way here so we don’t have any of tonight’s poultry and there’s not enough in the freezer to cover us so we’re revising the menu and I don’t have time to go to Ronnie’s and there is absolutely no way I have time to call her and try to convince her to deliver, so can you go pick up? Ivan will give it to you, you can trust him, you won’t even have to check it, but I have to be here,” David says, and then gasps in a breath at the end, like he’s forgotten how often his body actually needs to breathe in a minute. 

“I—”

“Patrick,” David says, taking a second to meet his eye. “Please?”

“Yes, sure. I’ll go now. I’ll call you if I have any problems.” 

Of course, when Patrick gets to the bakery, it’s Ronnie who’s handling pickups. 

“Hmmm, the baseball fan,” she drawls, but he’s had the foresight to come prepared. 

“Hi, Ronnie. I’m here to pick up the bread order for the Apothecary, but I also wanted to apologize for not being prepared at our first meeting. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that I didn’t think the bread was important to the business of the restaurant, or imply that you didn’t seem like a baseball fan. I think we got off on the wrong foot, and I’d like to make it up to you by offering you an opportunity to watch batting practice during the next homestand,” he says in the exact voice he used when he had to apologize for breaking the panes of Mr. Milton’s greenhouse when he was 14 on four separate occasions. Patrick maintained it wasn’t his fault he was such a good home run hitter, but with his dad’s large hand on his shoulder, he could sound very contrite.

“And does this opportunity include game tickets? Or do I have to spring for those myself?” Ronnie asks, arms still crossed. 

“I will check with my contact and make sure you have two,” she narrows her eyes, so he course corrects, “_four_ game tickets included in the batting practice invitation.”

She nods, satisfied. “Twyla already called to tell me you’d be coming instead of David, and I like her better than both of you, so your order’s all ready.”

He sighs, relieved, and thanks her. “And Patrick,” she says sternly, “David Rose is a friend of mine. You keep that in mind as you think about your involvement in his business and life.” She fixes him with a last look and disappears back into the kitchen, leaving Ivan to load the order.

_Huh_, Patrick thinks. _Despite the nickname, she really does love him, too_. 

It takes him a minute to realize what he’s just thought, and he’s happy to take his embarrassment all the way to Montreal with him that afternoon. 

***

**Monday, October 2, 2017**

“Have you asked him?” Stevie says on Monday. If Patrick leans left, he can see her through the office door, standing with her arms crossed and looking hard at David where he is making them omelettes. Patrick does like Stevie, and loves getting to tease David with her like he’s as close a friend as David and Stevie clearly are, but he gets a twinge of jealousy when she intrudes on their quiet Mondays. He stands up from the desk to stretch and goes to lean against the door jamb.

“Asked who what?” he asks, like he belongs in this conversation, like he’s not just standing here to be able to see David’s forearm flex as he whisks eggs. David just rolls his eyes at Stevie, so she turns to Patrick.

“You. Are you doing anything for Thanksgiving? If you’re going to be in town, we’re doing a little dinner at David’s.”

Patrick can feel his heart rate pick up, embarrassingly, at the thought of being in David’s home. He tries not to sound too eager.

“Actually, yeah, I’m going to be in the city, I’d love to, uh, if you’re sure?” He looks at David’s back, leaning over a pan, ignoring them behind him. 

“He’s sure, we’re all sure, it’s just going to be some friends and David’s sister, basically. You should bring a dish, too, we potluck to give the professionals a bit of a break. I mean, David still won’t let anyone else touch the turkey, but you should bring a side, a vegetable if possible.”

“Okay, great, I can do that.” Patrick feels excited for about four minutes until he realizes that means he’s going to have to cook something for David to eat, and then he stresses out about it for every single minute of the rest of the week. Even once he decides on his dish, he can’t shake the nervous, butterfly feeling of it. 

***

**Friday, October 6, 2017**

“Hey, do you mind if I make my side at your place?” Patrick asks Friday over a lunch of cassoulet. “It’s pretty quick, only about half an hour, but I don’t want it to get cold on my way over.” No one has actually told him yet where David lives, and he’s trying to be patient, but he’s sort of dying to know. He can really only imagine David in some ritzy loft, but he’s been working on the books too long to believe David would be able to afford one. 

“Yeah, that’s fine. What did you decide to make?” David reaches over and steals a bit of Patrick’s cassoulet with the toast he’s holding, even though he made it and could have just put more on his own plate. Patrick feels his cheeks warm and nudges his shoulder into David’s ostensibly to fend him off, but mostly to lean in a bit. 

“It’s [my dad’s brussels sprouts](https://www.foodnetwork.ca/shows/great-canadian-cookbook/recipe/ultimate-brussels-sprouts-with-bacon-beer-maple-syrup-and-mustard/18834/). They were always my favorite part of Thanksgiving growing up.” He laughs a bit at the memory. “I thought it was so cool and grown-up that they had beer in them.” 

David steals the last bit of the cassoulet off Patrick’s plate and stands up. “Do you want to see the kitchen and talk me through what you need? I have basically everything between here and there.” 

Patrick stands up too, surprised. “Now? Don’t you need to be here?”

David wrinkles his forehead. “Did you not know that I live above the restaurant? I feel like we talked about this at some point. Have we not talked about this? Wendy and I bought the building.”

It’s Patrick’s turn to wrinkle his forehead. “You own this building?” He follows David out to the alley, around a dumpster, and into a back stairwell. “I think I should have known that by now, or at least seen it in your business records, David.”

David waves a hand at him like owning the building doesn’t matter to the financial health of the restaurant and ushers him into a small one bedroom.  
“Well, this is it,” he says awkwardly, gesturing expansively to take in the living room/dining room combination, the small but well-equipped kitchen, and a doorway that must lead to the bedroom and bathroom. 

Patrick loves it instantly. It looks just like David, a near monochrome palette but with soft, simple, cozy furnishings, and one large piece of colorful abstract art. 

“Well, I can see why you have trouble being on time for your deliveries, your commute must be hellish,” Patrick smirks, and then laughs openly when David glares at him and crosses his arms with a huff. 

***

**Monday, October 9, 2017**

The nerves he never quite shook intensify with every step he takes up to David’s apartment. He’s there a full hour early, mostly because he was too impatient not to be. When he knocks, David answers the door with his hair twisted in a sort of turban of towel, dressed, but clearly not ready for company.

“Sorry, I’m early, I know, I didn’t—”

“It’s fine, come in, you can set the table while I finish my hair.” David waves him over to the kitchen and retreats to the bedroom, and Patrick watches him fondly. David has given him the impression he doesn’t let anyone see him less than perfect. He’s complained on a number of occasions how much earlier he has to get up to make himself presentable on the days that Patrick joins him for early morning deliveries, and Patrick’s suggestion that David not bother was met with vociferous objection. It’s stupid to read too much into this, it’s not like David had any control over Patrick showing up early, but the fact that it doesn’t seem to bother him makes Patrick feel special, like he’s passed some sort of test.

David is surprisingly not a backseat driver while Patrick prepares his sprouts. They rub elbows a bit in the kitchen when David needs to check on the turkey, but other than that he just sits at the island and talks while Patrick cooks. Once his dish is done, Patrick joins him and trades a story about his grade 8 talent show for the one David has just told about his bar mitzvah. David thinks he’s won the embarrassment championship with his, but Patrick gives him a run for his money, and they’re both laughing so hard Patrick has to retrieve the mostly full beer bottle he used for the recipe and drain it and then wipe his eyes with a paper towel. When he looks back at David, David’s stopped laughing and is watching him. 

“What?” Patrick asks, but David just shakes his head. “Okay. I’m going to use the bathroom, I’ll be back. Don’t burn the turkey.”

David shouts “hey!” at his back, but doesn’t bother defending himself further. As he stands in David’s bathroom, Patrick lets himself entertain the idea, one he’s tried not to indulge much, that David might still want to kiss him, the way Patrick definitely still wants to kiss David.

When Patrick emerges from the bathroom, he’s ready to ask about the approximately 97 skincare products and the minifridge on the counter, but they’re no longer alone. A tall, willowy blonde woman has arrived. He joins David at the counter where he’s getting their new guest a drink.

“What do you want?” David asks, holding up a wine glass. “Wine, water… soda? Possibly Albany brought beer?”

“Oh, I don’t— I can have water, it’s—” Patrick starts, embarrassed.

“It’s fine, you can have wine. You’re allowed,” David says, smiling gently at his awkwardness. “Pinot noir is probably best to pair with this selection.”

“Um, yes, then, I’ll take advantage of your expertise.” David pours, and a shivery thrill runs up Patrick’s arm when their fingers brush as he hands the glass over. It’s possible Patrick might not actually survive this night, in David’s cozy apartment, with wine and friends and David looking so unbelievably soft and touchable now that he’s traded his chef whites and t-shirts for a slightly fuzzy black sweater. Patrick’s own v-neck sweater sleeves are pushed up to his elbows as usual, and when he turns to greet Stevie as she comes through the door, he lets his forearm brush David’s to feel the silky softness. It gives him goosebumps. It’s going to be a long night.

Eventually, he tears himself away from David’s side to thank Stevie for inviting him, which gets him a glare from David. Stevie also actually introduces him to Albany, who has been standing quietly staring out the window since she arrived. 

David had whispered to him, his lips close to Patrick’s ear, as Patrick plated his brussels sprouts, that Albany was his only friend from before rehab who had stuck around, mostly because she had also been cruelly used by the people in their old life, especially a girl named Klair who had sort of been one of Alexis’s crowd. 

“She’s a little…” David had paused, watching her worriedly as she drifted between a bookshelf and the window. “She’s still healing,” he said, eventually, and Patrick resolved in that moment to be as kind to Albany as it was possible for him to be. Now, he offers her his hand to shake and wipes it on the apron he’s still wearing, instead, when she doesn’t reach to take it. 

“It’s nice to meet you, Patrick. David’s mentioned you’ve been working here,” she says, looking over his shoulder at David still busying himself in the kitchen. 

Patrick smiles. “Like, in a ‘oh I’m so glad he’s here, he’s saving my business, if only we’d met sooner’ way or in a ‘I fed this guy once and he’s like a stray cat, he thinks that means he can keep coming back’ way?” 

“Somewhere in between, I think,” Albany says, with a tiny smile, and Patrick can feel his smile growing at the thought of what David might have actually said to her. They’re friends, they are definitely just friends, but maybe David might have been okay with more if he weren’t focusing on his sobriety. Maybe someday he will want more. Maybe Patrick’s reading too much into it, but a guy can dream.

Eventually they’re joined by Twyla, who apologizes for not bringing her cousin and her boyfriend because the cousin’s boyfriend couldn’t make bail. David reminds her that they weren’t invited anyway, and they don’t have enough places at the table, but she seems unconcerned by that. 

David’s sister Alexis appears even later, having roped a guy Stevie went to school with named Ted to carry the flower arrangement she’s brought in addition to the two pies he’s shifted to his other hand. Alexis looks Patrick up and down appraisingly when he introduces himself, which makes him blush, especially when she turns to shout to David, “why didn’t you tell me you had such an adorable little button-face working for you, David!”

“Actually—” Patrick starts, ready to correct her as he’s so often corrected David, but David shouts back, “Patrick doesn’t work _for_ me, Alexis, he’s an independent consultant!”

Alexis rolls her eyes and goes to hug Albany, so Patrick lets himself slide back into the kitchen to help. He is still wearing an apron, after all.

“So when you text me some days that you don’t want to get up in time to collect bread from Ronnie and send me, claiming we need to keep ‘repairing our relationship to foster good employee/vendor relations,’ I work for you, but when your sister asks I’m an ‘independent consultant’?” he says, smirking and nudging David, who’s piling pillowy dinner rolls into a basket. 

“I mean, you said you wanted to make the business a success, and facing Ronnie even though she is still not much of a fan of yours is part of our success!” David says. He hands Patrick back his wine glass, which Patrick stupidly left on the counter next to David this whole time.

“Shit, sorry!” Patrick says, taking it.

“It’s really fine. Wine isn’t one of the things that tempt me,” David says, and Patrick could swear, unless it’s just how hard he’s wishing it, that David glances down at Patrick’s pinot noir-reddened lips. He licks them, half-unconsciously, half to see if David’s really looking, but the results are inconclusive because the door opens again, and a tall, tan guy in a henley comes in carrying a casserole dish, and David grimaces. 

“What?” Patrick asks.

“It’s Jake, our mushroom supplier. Stevie asked if she could bring someone but she didn’t tell me it would be him. It’s fine, he’s just kind of… open? And equal opportunity? And it tends to change up the dynamic of a party.” At Patrick’s confused look, David smirks. “He’s a slut, Patrick. A nice guy, very self-actualized, earthy, and an unrepentant slut.” 

“Oh,” Patrick says, not sure how he’s supposed to respond to that statement and make himself look sex-positive and chill and non-judgemental. “Cool?”

“David!” Jake says, depositing his casserole dish on the counter. “Wow, it’s been a while.” He leans in and kisses David, familiarly, on the lips, and something clenches in Patrick’s chest. When he pulls back, he gestures to Patrick. “Who’s this guy?”

David seems a tiny bit flustered by the kiss, which just tightens the feeling in Patrick’s chest. “Oh, that’s—that’s my—”

“Patrick,” Patrick offers, sticking his hand out between them possibly a bit forcefully.

“That’s Patrick,” David agrees.

“_Hi_, Patrick,” Jake says, in a voice that Patrick’s used himself once or twice but never had directed at him. “It’s _great_ to meet you.” He holds Patrick’s hand just a fraction too long, as if Patrick needs any other information to understand he’s being flirted with.

“Yeah, good to meet you, man,” he says, shifting towards David a bit. 

“Um, what did you bring, Jake?” David says, a bit high and loud. 

Jake’s eyes are still on Patrick when he answers. “It’s three mushroom stuffing.”

“Of course,” David says, flapping a hand in an almost-shrug. “Okay, sit down, it’s all ready!” he calls, past Jake to the rest of the room. 

Patrick had made a joke about place cards, which had always been his job at family Thanksgivings growing up, but David just teased him about needing to control everything and they got into a “pot, meet kettle” back and forth, so nothing had ever been done about seating arrangements. Patrick supposes it could be worse, since he ends up next to David, at least. 

David is at the head of the table and Alexis takes the foot, unconsciously, like their parents might have always arranged themselves that way. Patrick takes the chair on David’s right, with Twyla next to him and Albany next to her, whispering with Alexis about someone they used to know. Ted takes Alexis’s other side, looking a bit in awe of her, and Stevie takes the middle so that she can be next to Jake, who is still looking at Patrick, letting his eyes rake over Patrick’s forearms and hands as they pass the dishes. Patrick doesn’t mind so much, since it’s sort of nice to be so blatantly and clearly desired by a man and for that not to be scary or weird, but he does feel a little bad for Stevie, who apparently invited Jake. 

Dinner is, unsurprisingly, delicious, and David’s face when he tastes Clint Brewer’s famous brussels sprouts is something Patrick will never forget as long as he lives. David leans towards him and puts a hand on the back of Patrick’s chair to thank him, and Patrick feels warm all over and takes a big gulp of his wine. The whole meal is funny and warm, and Patrick looks around at all of them laughing genuinely at the increasingly stupid Thanksgiving puns Ted has been making and realizes that it’s been a long time since he’s had an easy, relaxed time with some friends. Even before he was working so much and he and Rachel were falling apart, he was always a little bit too nervous to truly relax in groups, but he trusts David and David’s friends.

“Hey, Patrick!” Ted calls down the table, “what’s the best music for Thanksgiving dinner?” Patrick pretends to consider the question seriously, stroking his chin thoughtfully.

“Excuse me, the perfect music for Thanksgiving dinner is the playlist you are enjoying right at this very minute, which has been carefully curated for your enjoyment by—”

Patrick cuts David off. “Ted, could it be, possibly, ‘Plymouth Rock’?” Ted looks delighted. 

David protests, “we’re not even in America, Plymouth Rock is by Boston!” 

“I’m sorry, David, you’re right. Okay, what do turkeys drink out of?” David crosses his arms and refuses to play, but there’s still a smile fighting to emerge on his face when he meets Patrick’s eyes to roll his at Ted, and Patrick just wants to reach for him. He stuck to one glass of wine since he knows they’re in a mixed group, but he wishes he had had a bit more, just enough to give him the courage to look at David the way Jake is _still_ looking at Patrick. 

It’s Albany who comes up with the answer, suddenly crowing, “They drink out of gobble-lets!” Everyone dissolves into laughter, even David, and when they recover they all help clear the table and reset it to taste Ted’s pies. As Patrick’s collecting the dirty silverware, Alexis slides up next to him and smacks his arm lightly.

“I can’t believe David hasn’t said anything about you, Patrick! How long have you been dating?” She seems excited for them, and it kills Patrick to have to correct her.

“Oh, we’re not, we’re just friends. And I do work as a consultant, I’m helping him and Wendy with the management side of the restaurant, it’s what I went to school for.” She frowns comically at him, making pouty whiny noises and pawing at his arm a bit.

“Oh, poor baby!”

“Oh, no, I love it, actually, it’s really nice to get to use my degree, I don’t, really, in my regular job. David’s doing me a favor, really.”

The pawing turns into a soothing pat. “Not about that, just…” She leans in to whisper. “Does David know you’re like, totally smitten with him? Is he being a jerk?” 

Patrick’s face is on fire. He was really hoping he wasn’t that obvious, although he supposes he probably is. 

“It’s not… he doesn’t… we’re friends, Alexis,” he finishes, pathetically.

“Oh, mmm,” she says, frowning again, and the sympathetic sound is worse than her initial assumption. “Well, your secret is safe with me, Patrick.” She pats his arm one last time and flits away, utterly failing to help at all with any of the cleaning up.

Post-pie, Patrick starts to work on the dishes and finish off the open bottle of wine that Ted, Alexis, and Jake had mostly shared between them. He’s partly lingering, hoping to get a little more time alone with David, and partly avoiding Jake, who has been very respectful but also very clear about his intent. Patrick knows if he had just said “no, thanks,” Jake would have left him alone, but the way David looked at them every time Jake touched him or talked to him made him want to let it go on a little bit longer. This time, Jake touches his lower back as he comes up next to Patrick at the sink.

“Hey, Jake, listen,” Patrick finally says, but Jake just smiles at him and leans a little bit closer.

“If things don’t work out with David, or, you know, if they do and you guys are looking for more, give me a call, okay? Stevie has my number,” Jake says, low and calm, and then kisses Patrick’s cheek and takes his leave. 

Almost as soon as he does, David appears next to Patrick.

“You don’t have to do the dishes. You don’t ever have to do the dishes, I see you back there sometimes during service helping out Andrés,” David says, trying to look slightly stern. 

“I like doing dishes. I find it soothing,” Patrick says, “although not usually in the middle of your dinner service. I just like helping, and Andrés is the only person in your kitchen I’m qualified to help.” David chews his lips at that, but passes Patrick another serving dish.

“So… uh, Jake…” David starts, after a minute or two of silence. “Anything… happening there?”  
Patrick looks up, but David is looking very carefully at the plate he is scraping pie remnants off of and still chewing his lips. 

“Oh. I don’t know, I guess it’s nice to get a little attention, like that, but I’m kind of a one person guy, and he seemed like he might not be interested in monogamy long term.” Patrick keeps his eyes on David’s face and is rewarded by a bit of a smile, twisted and hidden. “Besides,” Patrick continues, rinsing the dish he’s working on, “I don’t know how much discussion of Sphagnum peat I really want to listen to just to get to make out with a hot person.”

“I mean, I’ve done way worse than that,” David admits, grimacing dramatically, and Patrick laughs. 

By the time they get through the dishes it’s late, but Patrick still lingers. David’s Thanksgiving dinner playlist is still playing and has shifted into something mellow and instrumental, and he lets David press the last glass of wine into his hand and settles down on the couch. They talk quietly about the meal, and Twyla’s large and confusing family, and Stevie’s small and absent family. They both agree they feel sorry for Ted, following Alexis around all night, crush written all over his face. David thinks it was the most he’s heard Albany laugh, and he fills Patrick in a bit more on Klair’s crimes. He obliquely references a man who had a similar hold over him, and Patrick feels his hand clench into a fist at the thought of getting Sebastien Raine alone someday. 

Eventually David yawns, and Patrick realizes with a start that it’s 1am and David has to be up for deliveries in three hours. David waves off his concerns though, and grabs him the extra pillow from his own bed and a blanket for the couch. 

“Thank you, by the way,” David says as they’re saying goodnight, “for the brussels sprouts. They were delicious.”

“I’ll have to tell my dad a famous chef liked his sprouts, he’ll be honored. And hey, maybe you can return the favor someday.”

Daivd crosses his arms, indignant. “Excuse me? I cook for you every day you come to work!”

Patrick smiles. “Sure, but that was my favorite recipe from my childhood, David. It’s a treasured dish, more about the memory than the ingredients, and I doubt the Welsh rarebit we had for lunch on Tuesday is one of those for you.”

David softens, but he keeps up the act. “I’ll have you know, cheese and bread are always elevated to the level of ‘a treasured dish,’ and my kitchen doesn’t accept requests, substitutions, or alterations. Go to sleep and stop annoying me, I have to get up in basically 5 minutes.”

He flounces away, and Patrick laughs as he calls out, “Goodnight, David.”

Patrick falls asleep in his jeans, with the smell of David surrounding him, and even though he’ll probably also be up in only a handful of hours, he thinks he might be getting the best sleep of his life. 

***

**Friday, October 27, 2017**

It’s more than two weeks later and another trip to Montreal and back before David makes good on his unspoken promise. He shuffles sleepily into the office around 10am and curls up on the loveseat to let the mug of coffee he’s carried downstairs slowly wake him up, and Patrick pretends to be doing something on the computer but he’s really just watching David breathe. 

There’s only been a handful of times in the four months Patrick’s been coming to the restaurant that David has carried this soft sleepiness into the office in the mornings, and every single one has felt like a gift. Patrick actually has something he wants to say to David today, but it can wait until the right moment. 

Several minutes after he’s sat down, long after Patrick’s forgotten to even pretend to work, David says, “My nanny was from Spain.” 

Patrick starts slightly. “She was?” Of course David grew up with a nanny, Patrick should have guessed, but David’s never mentioned her before.

“Her name was Adelina. We spent more time with her as kids than we spent with any other adult. And she was a terrible cook.” David still hasn’t opened his eyes, so Patrick watches the expressions move across his face.

“Is that how you started? Because she was so bad?” 

David smiles slightly. “Sort of. The point is, she was terrible, but one thing she was great at making, that I just _loved_, was tortilla española.” David finally cracks an eye open to see if the name gets any recognition from Patrick. 

“I feel like I’ve had it at a tapas place, maybe. It’s egg, right?”

David nods. “It’s a thick sort of frittata of egg, potato, and onion. It’s good hot, but I mostly ate it cold, straight from the fridge, as a sandwich with crusty bread. It’s so simple but it took me forever to get it just right so that it tasted like hers.” He smiles his crooked smile at Patrick. “Want lunch in an hour? That’ll give it time to get cold.” 

Patrick feels like his face was probably giving him away, but he just feels like he’s melting inside when David looks at him like that, every time, and now David is looking at him like that after offering to make him his childhood favorite food for lunch. Patrick ducks his head and looks down at the calculator David had given him a hard time for bringing from home. 

“Yeah, whenever is great, David.”

Patrick ends up, as he so often does, drifting out into the kitchen to sit up on a counter and watch David cook. His focus on the actual restaurant management is reliably terrible once David appears, but he feels less guilty than usual giving in and giving up today. David tells him a little more about Adelina as he slices and whisks, and Patrick trades him stories of days running around as a pack with his cousins in the summers, pushing each other into creeks and recreating historic Blue Jays wins with only five players. While the tortilla cools, they actually discuss business. 

David presents the tortilla on a baguette, with a beautiful, summery hothouse tomato sliced thinly. Patrick waits to see the blissful expression on David’s face as he takes his first bite before trying his own. He groans in appreciation at the thick, salty slab of tortilla contrasting with the fresh, tangy tomato and simple, springy bread. He finishes his first half sandwich in a few bites, making David laugh at his eagerness to start on the second. As he chews, Patrick watches David, and thinks, _now is as good a time as any, Brewer_. 

“Oh!” he says, like he’s just remembered, like he hasn’t had it marked on his calendar from that first night. “I meant to say, happy 1000th day of sobriety, man!” He sets down his napkin and holds out his arms for a friendly hug. David doesn’t move. He looks like he’s been slapped, his mouth dropped open in shock. Patrick feels his arms wilt. 

“Sorry, is it not okay to say that? I just thought—” He’s looked down at the rubber mats on the floor and so lets out an _oof!_ of surprise as David’s body slams into his. David pushes him backwards until Patrick hits the wall. David’s hand has come up behind his head to keep it from bouncing, which is good, because Patrick is too shocked to defend himself. He looks up at David’s face but just as suddenly David is kissing him, fiercely and intensely, and Patrick instantly gives himself over to it.

Their kiss in June had been chaste and short but it had still lit him up from the inside. This kiss is nothing like that, and he feels like a firework, or a meteor shower, or some other white-hot, shimmering thing, because David is _kissing him_, his tongue is in Patrick’s mouth, and Patrick pushes back, trying to get more of David under his hands. He’d crawl inside of David if he could, and he finally gets David back against the counter they were eating at to get a little leverage, and the stack of clean bowls on the end of it crash to the floor and bounce, clanging loudly. 

“Shit!” David gasps, and Patrick has to laugh. If he doesn’t laugh the happiness swelling in his chest might make him explode, and he can’t explode before he gets to do all the things he’s been wanting to do for the last few months (and the last few years). David starts to shush him, but Patrick has officially lost control of his giggles. 

“We have to get out of here before the staff… shhhh! Stop laughing!” David tries, but he’s laughing too, now, and Patrick, still giggling, tries to kiss the laugh out of his mouth and misses. 

David grabs his hand and heads for the back door, and Patrick can’t help but run, giggling and holding David’s beautiful scarred hand in his own, like he’s a child running through a field in the summer in a movie, out to the alley and up the stairs. They burst into David’s apartment and David collapses back on the couch, pulling Patrick down on top of him, and Patrick is panting, but he’s not giggling anymore, with David’s body underneath him and David’s handsome face smiling up at him. 

“David,” he starts, wanting to say something, anything, to make David understand, but he can’t get further, with David’s mouth so soft and so close. They kiss for ages, all their urgency bled out of them with their laughter, and it feels like sinking into his own bed after a long week of driving the 401 back and forth. Like he belongs here, in David’s arms, and like he can relax, and let his guard down, and just enjoy himself. They kiss and kiss, and Patrick stops thinking, for once, and just feels David’s rough hands and rasping stubble and firm body and soft skin and silky hair and that unbelievable buoyant pressure building in his chest, until he finally has to break away to breathe more than the shallow little sips he’s been allowing himself because he couldn’t bear to stop. David grins up at him, rubbing his hands up and down Patrick’s back soothingly.

“Sorry,” he whispers, “for attacking you? I guess?” Patrick huffs out a laugh and presses a kiss to David’s chin, and then his laugh lines, and then his left eyebrow. 

“It’s just… I know I said I just needed friends, and I do, but it was mostly about not letting anything new in, and compromising my recovery. But then you said that, you said ‘happy thousandth day,’ and I just thought ‘fuck it.’” David purses his lips and looks down at Patrick’s left hand where it’s resting on David’s chest. “No one but me has ever bothered to keep track. And the second you said it, I thought ‘I’ve already compromised it, I’ve already….’ I already liked you, no matter what I told myself about not being allowed to.”

Patrick laughs again at that, and David looks back up to check if Patrick’s laughing at him. “Sorry, David, I’m just laughing because… me, too. This whole time I’ve been telling myself I have to be a good friend, and support you, and not distract you, and stop thinking about you constantly, and I _sucked_ at it.” David smirks up at him and Patrick can feel his face doing something that might be a smirk but might just be the human version of the heart eyes emoji. “I already liked you too, _like_ liked you, no matter what I tried to tell myself.”

David leans up into him again, and Patrick hums happily into the kiss as David wraps his arms around him, but David executes a surprisingly athletic move and flips them, depositing Patrick on the couch and starting to stand. Patrick is pretty sure the sound he makes should be classified somewhere between turned on and whiney. David leans down into him for a last kiss, but backs away before Patrick can drag him back down.

“I have to get ready for service!” David laughs, as Patrick makes grabby hands at him with an exaggerated, Alexis-like pout until he can’t hold it anymore and laughs himself. He watches David step into the bedroom and sighs, relaxing back into the couch cushions. David _kissed him_. He was just _making out_ with _David Rose_, and after David goes downstairs and handles service, he’ll probably let Patrick do it again, only this time he’ll be flush with success and a bit sweaty from the heat of the kitchen and he will have just fed hundreds of people the best meals they will probably ever eat. Patrick shivers a bit at the mental image, but it’s immediately replaced with the actual image of David emerging from the bedroom in his whites, jacket hanging open, already adjusting a flat top cap.

“It’s a good thing I’m required to cover my hair, since you’ve completely ruined it with your wandering hands,” David scolds. Patrick jumps up to meet him and get those hands between David’s t-shirt and jacket, smoothing them up his broad back and pulling him close for another lingering kiss. 

“Go, feed people,” Patrick says quietly, resting his forehead against David’s neck and pulling him into a hug. “I’ll come down in a bit and finish up the work you completely distracted me from.” He can feel David’s scoff through his whole chest where they’re pressed together, and it’s just another excellent sensation in a day full of sensations beyond his previous definition of ‘excellent.’

“Oh, and David,” he pulls back to make eye contact, because this part is serious. “It got a little lost, before, but I am really proud of you for your thousandth day.” 

David tips his head back and squints, shrugging off the emotion, and pulls back. “Thank you, shut up, please, I have to go downstairs and be in charge of people now, so please stop saying lovely things.”

Patrick just smiles at him as he escapes, but thinks, fiercely, _Never_. 

***

**Thursday, November 9, 2017**

“David,” Patrick says with his ear against David’s heart. “What are your 4am thoughts?” David hums and shifts, reaching a hand up to stroke his fingers over the hair above Patrick’s ear. 

“Now? Mostly how loud your snoring is and how annoying it is that I have to get ready listening to it.” Patrick huffs a laugh and digs a knuckle into David’s sensitive side, in the spot that David claims is not at all ticklish. David wriggles, nearly dislodging Patrick, so Patrick relents and smooths his palm firmly down to David’s hip in apology. David quiets and sighs.

“Usually,” he finally says, “it’s Alexis, and how I could have lost her because I was too reckless to actually be sober enough to help if she called. And how I was great at cooking, but also completely blowing being a chef. And my mom and dad.” He laces his fingers with Patrick, down on his own hip. “Those things are all better now, but I still think of them when I’m up at the crack of dawn. And I think about whether I’m going to make it through the day without relapsing, and whether George will, and whether Twyla will.” 

Patrick wrinkles his forehead. “Twyla too?”

“Yes, Twyla too. Everyone in this kitchen, really, although some not as bad as others. Twyla got in over her head with Xanax, not anything truly recreational, but when Stevie decided to get sober and stop drinking cases of wine by herself, she pulled Twyla in. They were high school sweethearts. Sometimes I think they might end up back together, but Stevie _claims_ nothing is happening.”

Patrick just hums at that, turning his head slightly to kiss David’s chest. Sometimes he’s bowled over by just how much David worries about the people he loves. Patrick’s always been a worrier, but a kind of selfish worry. How can he be what people need, how can he live up to expectations, how can he not disappoint. David’s worry is disguised under bluster, and indignation, and verbal sparring, but Patrick’s not sure he’s ever met someone so full of love for other people that he’s built this shelter of a kitchen, full of people needing a chance to do work in an environment safer from threats to their sobriety. Still so full of love for his distant, difficult, dramatic family that he worries about them every morning, bullies his sister into coming by the restaurant and pretends to hate that she sneaks the ginger snaps the servers bring out with the check, but always makes sure he has extras on hand when he knows she’s coming. 

“I had a high school sweetheart, but I shouldn’t have,” he says. He’s not sure how much he can tell David. Disappointing Rachel and her parents and his parents is still fresh, and David knows he’s new to knowing he’s gay, and new to men, but still, it’s probably better just to leave his past cowardice in the past. 

“Mmm, I’ve been with a lot of people I shouldn’t have,” David whispers. “Is this the part where I get to hear the tragic backstory?”

Patrick smiles, but it’s small. He looks down at their hands, his pale smooth fingers and David’s tanner scarred ones. “You’ve kind of already heard it. I kept secrets, from myself, from everyone. I didn’t, like, live a double life, but I didn’t know who I really was, and then when I started to figure it out, I never told anyone.” 

“You don’t have to tell anyone anything you don’t want to, you know, coming out is a very personal thing, and you should do it on your own terms and in your own time.” David presses a kiss to the top of his head and Patrick clenches his jaw. David knows, the restaurant staff know, they just see him as he is. Patrick, David’s boyfriend, restaurant business manager, deliriously happy, lovesick idiot following David around markets, pulling the cart with hearts in his eyes. It feels selfish to want more than that, to risk how his parents see him, or his cousins. 

“Or,” David says, jostling him a bit and sliding a hand down Patrick’s back as low as he can reach, “you could never tell anyone anything and keep up your international man of mystery, jet-setty ways, it’s very hot. It’s like I’m dating a spy.”

Patrick breathes out a little laugh and pushes himself up to hover over David. “Is this your way of telling me you have a James Bond fantasy you want to discuss? I have to warn you, I don’t think it counts as ‘international’ _or_ ‘jet-setty’ when I’m just driving between two Canadian provinces.” 

“Frankly, the details are less important than the mental image of you in a tux,” David says, low and heated, and Patrick thinks it’s very likely that David won’t be getting enough sleep tonight to wake up in time for his 4am thoughts tomorrow.

***

**Thursday, November 16, 2017**

The bed in this hotel in Montreal sucks. It’s cold, and the restaurant tonight was barely worth finishing a meal in, and he hasn’t seen David, touched David, in three whole days. Patrick sits up and punches the pillow into a less lumpy shape and flops back down. He stares at the ceiling for one whole verse of “The Yellow Submarine,” which has been running through his head on a loop since he heard it on the radio on the way here, and then heaves a frustrated sigh and gives up.

It’s only 11:30, he doubts David is asleep. Is it pathetic to call the guy you’ve been dating for like three weeks after you’ve been apart for only three days? He can’t get comfortable in this terrible bed, and now that he’s had the thought, he can’t stop thinking about being able to hear David’s voice, so he grabs his phone. 

His lock screen is a picture he snuck when David was making shakshuka and ranting about molecular gastronomy. He’s turned towards the office door, but he’s looking at the ceiling, holding three eggs in his hands and shaking them at the sky, like the gods of farm fresh eggs can do anything to stop people thinking molecular gastronomy is cool. Every time Patrick sees it he thinks about how much he had wanted to go to him and wrap his arms around David’s waist. He couldn’t do it then, in September, but he could do it now, if David was within reach. He dials.

“Hi?” David says, and just that makes Patrick break out in goosebumps.

“Hi. How did service go?”

“Someone sent back the only vegetarian meal we make because it wasn’t ‘vegan enough,’ and Alison managed not to explain to them that ‘vegan’ is actually a binary term. It either is or it isn’t! It can’t be ‘not enough’! And nothing we make is, and Alison is good at her job, so I’m pretty sure she would have made that clear if this idiot had asked, but we just sent it back out without the fried egg and I didn’t hear anything else, so.” David huffs a sigh, and Patrick rubs a hand down his face and discovers he’s grinning.

“Good for Alison. I wish I could have eaten the rejected meal, I had a _very_ uninspiring dinner tonight.”

“Mmmm. Is that why you called? I don’t think the phone works that way, I can’t teleport you food.” He can hear the smirk in David’s voice. They’ve been on the phone for maybe a minute and they’ve just talked about two dinners, and Patrick’s whole body is humming with want. He feels young, and ridiculous, and surprisingly good.

“David…” he starts.

David chuckles on the other end of the line. “Is it going to be that kind of call? Do you want me to tell you what I’m wearing? Or should I just keep talking about my food and we can... see if your mouth waters?” 

“David,” he starts again. He feels like he has to say this, even though he’s not quite sure what he’s actually going to say. 

“I never understood… I didn’t get why everyone else seemed so obsessed with sex, when I was younger, or honestly, ever? I didn’t understand why they couldn’t just control themselves and, I don’t know, focus on school, like I did, or….” He stops again. None of that is the point. 

“I get it now, David. I can’t control myself around you. I want to be touching you all the time. It’s in the back of my mind the entire day. It’s in the front of my mind most of the day, actually, especially when you’re in your kitchen, you’re so… it’s like magic, watching you in your kitchen. You are so fully you, always, but you’re like… unbelievably, amazingly you in your kitchen, in control of everything and such a creative genius and your staff is so in tune with you and it’s so hot, David, and I can’t really deal with the fact that you’re six hours away from me right now.” He takes a breath and kind of can’t believe that all just came out of his mouth.

“Oh,” David breathes into the phone. 

“I… sorry, that was a lot, maybe,” Patrick says, trying not to beat himself up for saying too much.

“No, it was… me too. But with spreadsheets?” David tries, and Patrick laughs, half in relief.

“That sounds stupid. I mean, no one’s ever… cared. About my business, and my staff, as much as I do, and you just… showed up one day and wanted to be _friends_, and help me, for nothing? And now…. I guess I just… I understand something I never understood, too.”

“David,” Patrick says, and he tries to put in his voice exactly how much he cares about David, and how desperately he wants to be in David’s bed, just to be able to touch him, not even have sex with him, right now.

“Shut up. What are you wearing?” David asks abruptly, and Patrick laughs.

***

**Friday, November 24, 2017**

Service is the time when he’s most in the way and David long ago banished him to the other side of the counter, which in turn made Stevie banish him to the confines of the office. He should just leave the restaurant altogether when he’s not helping the dishwashers or working, but he loves to watch David in his element so much he sometimes sneakily stands on the chair behind the door in the office to watch through the high transom window. He likes his apartment, but any space that doesn’t have David in it doesn’t really feel like a space he wants to be in, these days.

“Stevie, I swear to god!” David’s voice breaks through the general shouting of the kitchen in the middle of service and Patrick’s head pops up from where he’s been getting caught up on his reading on the office couch. He sits up so he’s closer to the door, although he can’t actually see the kitchen from here. 

“I don’t have time for this. You can’t let them come back here! Tell them it’s… tell them it’s a health hazard!”

“It _is_ a health hazard, David.” Stevie’s voice is her usual unflustered monotone, so it must not actually be any kind of emergency. Patrick starts to relax back onto the couch.

“Send someone out there, you have to distract them until I’m finished with this. Send… PATRICK!” David shouts, and Patrick almost falls off the couch before collecting himself and stepping out into the kitchen. He carefully stands in what Stevie has termed “the Patrick Containment Zone,” which is the only place he can talk to David from her side of the pass without getting in the way of her servers.

“What’s up?” he says, looking between Stevie, with her arms crossed and her whole body projecting being sick of David’s antics, and David, carefully and precisely plating tonight’s showstopper dessert, all the excess energy that can’t go into his steady hands making itself known on his mobile face.

“David’s parents are here and he’s freaking out about seeing them.” Stevie says, rolling her eyes.

“I’m not ‘freaking out about seeing them,’ I am just too _busy_ and _important_ to entertain them in the middle of dinner service!” He finishes a plate and looks pleadingly up at Patrick. “Go out there? You can tell my dad all about the boring business things you’re fixing for me and be your usual charming, ‘aw, shucks, ma’am’ self to my mother and they will love you and then maybe I’ll be able to finish these and come out and say hi.” 

Patrick tries to control his breathing. He and David have only been more than friends for a few weeks, and this might be his one chance to impress David’s parents. David claims to have a terrible relationship with them and not care what they think, but he’s mentioned them frequently during the last few months, and Patrick knows he can’t screw this up. 

“Sure. I’ll ask your dad for business advice, take your time,” he says, and leans forward. David leans forward around the side of the pass with his hands carefully behind his back to kiss Patrick once, just a chaste peck. Stevie makes a gagging sound and then takes Patrick by the arm to drag him out into the dining room. 

He does, in fact, ask Mr. Rose for advice, and gets well-intentioned useless big business platitudes in return. Mrs. Rose seems won over when he tells her his mother was a big fan of Sunrise Bay but stopped watching once she left the show, a lie he’s pretty sure he’s never going to get caught in. He explains to Mr. Rose about the adjustments he’s making to David and Wendy’s business model, and he’s just started in on a story about meeting David’s favorite fish supplier when David’s hand lands on his shoulder.

“Mom, Dad,” David says, guarded.

“Oh, David, my compliments to the chef!” Mr. Rose says, seeming delighted and sincere.

“Yes, dear, not exactly as avant garde as I expected, but still quite delectable,” Mrs. Rose adds, and Patrick looks up to see David grimace slightly. 

“Patrick has been telling us he’s whipping your business into shape, son,” Mr. Rose says, and Patrick immediately feels defensive on David’s behalf. He hadn’t exactly been saying that. He’d said that David’s business sense was excellent but that he needed some help on the details. He’d said that he was enjoying getting to use his degree and grateful David had given him the opportunity to do so. He opens his mouth to correct Mr. Rose somehow, but David speaks instead.

“Well, I needed the help and he was apparently bored, even though he’s an international man of mystery and always on the road.” David looks down and smiles at him, squeezing the hand still on Patrick’s shoulder. 

“You know,” Patrick says, realizing he’s never told David this and he might enjoy the surprise. “This is not the first time I’ve been put to work by the Rose family.” David quirks an eyebrow at him in confusion. “My first job, in high school, was actually at a Rose Video.”

David’s mouth, gratifyingly, drops open in shock. 

“Get outta town! What branch?” Mr. Rose asks, excited.

“785,” Patrick answers, smirking up at David’s surprised face.

“785? Impressive late fees!” Mr. Rose seems like he actually remembers their specific store’s late fees, which puts the ridiculous business advice Patrick’s been listening to in a different light. 

“Okay, how did I not know you worked at a Rose Video?” David asks. Patrick smiles up at him, pleased he could surprise him. 

Mrs. Rose touches Patrick’s arm, and when he looks at her she’s smiling at them knowingly, even though Patrick was very careful not to mention their relationship without talking to David about it first. “Well,” she says, “let’s hope you continue to surprise each other.”

They take their leave of the Roses, David saying he has to get back to the kitchen and Patrick just swept along with him, and once they get back through the door David pulls him into the office and shuts the door to kiss the breath out of him.

When he pulls back, Patrick just looks at him, dazed and panting, until he remembers how words work. “What was that for?”

“You’re so nice you somehow rubbed off on my parents and made them nice, and I don’t know how that works but I thought I should thank you for it,” David says. 

Patrick can’t help it. “You know, if you’re interested in learning more about how rubbing works…” he leers, pulling David closer by his apron strings.

“Oh, nope, you ruined it, we were talking about my _parents_!” David shudders. “And now I have to wash my hands again.” He stays where he is, though and just looks down at Patrick for a second longer, and he doesn’t look nearly as annoyed as he clearly wants to, so Patrick pulls him close again and kisses him sweet and soft until Twyla’s voice comes through the door to tell David not to worry about the burning smell.

***

**Friday, December 8, 2017**

Patrick has been at David’s every night for almost three weeks when he finally goes home for a change of clothes and to pack for his Montreal trip during service Friday night. After tossing his keys on the breakfast bar, he starts mechanically ripping open the piled up mail while taking in the sad state of his plants. There’s an ad, a fundraising letter from his college, his latest Baseball Research Journal, and then something in a heavy, expensive-feeling envelope. It’s from Michelin, which is so unusual he actually thinks he’s somehow been ratted out and fired. 

It’s just a single sheet when he rips it open, and starts “Monsieur Brewer, Nous vous envoyons cette lettre pour vous informer que, suite à votre critique du 1er juillet, une autre équipe d'inspection sera dans votre région…” and Patrick has to sit down hard on the nearest bar stool. 

Michelin would only be informing him about another inspection team in the area if that inspection team was following up on a review for the final star decision, and he doesn’t even have to check his calendar to know which was his “review of July 1st.” Michelin is taking The Apothecary seriously, taking David seriously, more seriously than they’ve taken any other chef he’s ever reviewed. 

His instinct is to immediately call David, and he actually gets his phone out of his jacket pocket, before realizing there are several reasons that would be a really bad idea. He could _actually_ get fired if it ever came out that he had tipped any chef off that he was in contention, let alone his boyfriend. The real problem, though, the thing that kicks Patrick’s heart rate up to probably dangerous levels, is that to be able to tip David off he’d have to tell David how he knows. He’s known David for five months and been sleeping with him for one, and as he thinks about it the lies and omissions just pile up on top of each other, higher and higher.

He’d meant to go back to the restaurant tonight and stay with David before he has to get in the car in the morning, but instead he just sits on his couch and looks at the letter and thinks about everything he has to lose. Eventually he texts David.

_Got caught up cleaning up all my dying plants. See you Sunday_ ❤️

He thinks about it the whole week in Montreal. Ray can tell he’s distracted and mostly leaves him alone. Patrick desperately wants to ask his advice, or ask if he also got the notification letter, but instead he just tries to be polite through lunches and dinners and paces his hotel room at night, filing perfunctory reviews and turning everything over in his mind. 

Not telling Rachel big important things about himself killed their relationship, but it wasn’t so much the not telling as the being gay. Telling David could ruin everything he’s just finally gotten. He’s been pretending to be someone else his whole life and with David he finally gets to be himself. How can it matter if David doesn’t quite know what he actually does or his actual name, he knows who Patrick _is_, and Patrick has never been more himself than he is with David, and that’s what is important, that emotional honesty. David’s probably not completely honest about every single thing with Patrick, either, they’ve only been dating for six weeks. And anyway, if he keeps David in the dark a little bit longer, David will win his star and that’s what will matter, not that Patrick didn’t tell him. 

By the time he drops Ray at his house late Sunday night, Patrick has decided. Nothing has to change until David gets his star. And until then, Patrick will do everything in his power to make David happy, and show David that it doesn’t matter that Patrick’s name and job are a secret, because all his other secrets have been laid bare under David’s hands.

He slips into David’s bed at 3am after dropping his suitcase at home. David groans and grumbles, but rolls over to accept Patrick’s kisses.

“Did you bring me a souvenir?” he murmurs, as Patrick slides his hands up under David’s sleep shirt.

“I brought myself, is that enough? I brought my mouth back from Montreal, were you expecting something maple-flavored?” Patrick teases as David sleepily tries to get with the program, trying to get his hands on any part of Patrick he can.

“I don’t know, what can you do with that mouth, anything sweet?” David says, and Patrick has to laugh at his barely awake attempts at dirty talk. He strips them both out of their clothes, but it’s clear that David’s too tired to do anything other than make out sleepily, and Patrick is honestly fine with that. He wraps himself around David and kisses as much of him as he can.

“I missed you, baby,” he whispers against David’s ear.

David just hums in response, so Patrick gentles his hands until he can feel David’s breathing even out. When he thinks David is really asleep, Patrick whispers again. “I really missed you, David.” 

David doesn’t stir, so Patrick gets a little braver. “I really missed you my whole life, honestly. I didn’t think I’d ever get to have this.” He pauses again, but David is still asleep. 

“I just, I didn’t think I’d get to be in love, like other people. And I’m so in love with you, baby. I’ve been in love with you for months.” 

Still no response, so he tries it out again, letting all the feelings he’s been trying to tamp down and keep in his chest when he sees David spill over for just a minute, here in the dark where David can’t hear him. “I love you, David Rose.” 

Maybe someday, maybe after David gets his star, he’ll be ready to tell him for real. 

***

**Monday, December 18, 2017**

David has reluctantly allowed Wendy to put up mistletoe in several strategic locations, and Patrick tries to steer him under it at every opportunity. David has given him a case of a double IPA from Patrick’s favorite brewery and has promised a paired tasting menu once they’ve been at least twice around the room at the Apothecary holiday party, but Patrick has already had three because they were delicious, and is only now noticing as he opens his fourth that they are 8%. He probably should have been more careful, but it’s Christmas, and he’s with David, and David will take care of him and laugh at his hangover tomorrow and probably make a filthy joke at some point in Patrick’s ear about whether he’ll be breaking his sobriety if he sucks Patrick off, and Patrick has never been so happy in his entire life. 

He gets a text from Alexis that she’s almost there and she’s bringing “a really cute girlfriend” who just started at her PR firm. He shows David, leaning into him, and David raises an eyebrow.  
“I feel like she does that deliberately for the mystery, like she never wants people to know if people are her friends or she’s dating them. Sometimes I think she doesn’t want _them_ to know if she’s dating them.” He rolls his eyes, and Patrick wants to kiss them. Can you kiss someone’s eyes?

“I don’t think that would be very comfortable, honey,” David says, amused. Patrick is drunker than he thought if he said that out loud, but he can’t even begin to care. There’s a clear stretch of floor some people have turned into an impromptu dance floor, and he drags David over so he can wrap himself around him and slow dance to “Blue Christmas.” David rolls his eyes again, but kisses Patrick’s temple and wraps his arms around Patrick’s neck where they belong. 

Patrick presses his lips into David’s neck and thinks _I love you, I love you so much, you’re a fucking Christmas miracle, David Rose_, trusting David’s skin to keep his thoughts from crossing his lips this time.

“Merry Christmas, Patrick,” David whispers against his ear, and pulls him even closer. Patrick squeezes him a bit and closes his eyes, resting his head on David’s shoulder and settling in.

“Patrick!” a voice calls out over the drunken chatter behind him. “Patrick Brewer!” Patrick freezes in David’s arms, and he can’t hide his reaction when David’s face is only inches from his. “Patrick Michael Brewer!” the voice calls again, and David is staring at him with a slow dawning horror on his face.

“Wait, _Patrick_ is your fiancé?!” Alexis says loudly very close to him, just as the song ends, into the sudden quiet. David backs up a step, dropping his arms, and Patrick turns, trying to keep David in sight and confirm that yes, there’s Rachel, standing next to Alexis with her arms crossed, the same pinched, annoyed look she always got when he ignored her on her face. 

“Rachel, what are you doing here?” he asks, feeling David back up another step. 

“What am _I_ doing here? What are _you_ doing here?!” She sounds honestly surprised, and really, why shouldn’t she be? The only restaurant he has ever been back to after a review is the one he asked her to marry him in, and they’ve managed not to run into each other in a year, and yet here they are, having the most awkward confrontation of all time in front of David. Or it would be in front of David, but he’s just turned on his heel and strode towards the kitchen.

“I’ll talk to you later, Rachel, we’ve got a lot to talk about!” Patrick tosses over his shoulder as he chases after David. 

He catches up to him as David pushes his way into the walk-in freezer. Patrick had said once that he hated it, because it makes him feel like he’ll somehow be trapped in there and freeze to death, and David had confessed that he loves it, in all its order and abundance, and goes in there whenever he needs to cool down a minute. Patrick only hesitates a second before following David. 

“David, I think I need to explain some things—” he starts.

“Oh, really?! What would be the main one, do you think? How about starting with the fact that you’ve been here fucking me and then going home to a pretty redhead in Montreal or wherever? Did you just decide that worming your way into my business wasn’t enough and you’d try for my bed, too?!”

“I didn’t— you know that’s not how it happened, David, I didn’t come here to seduce you, you loomed up out of the darkness that first night and said ‘Mr. Miller’—”

“And apparently that’s NOT EVEN YOUR NAME!” David shouts. Patrick’s mouth closes with a click. “Do you know, in all this time, how often Stevie had to talk me off a ledge about you?! I am _damaged goods_, Patrick, after everything, I am not good at trusting people, and you said you’d be my friend and offered me business advice and I took it, because you seemed like somehow you’d be different, and I’d get to have something good and nice _just once_, but I couldn’t do it without spiralling every week you were out of town about the fact that you were probably straight or just looking to experiment, and where did you go so often, and how could you possibly be genuinely this sweet and unattached. I was _sure_ you were married, with little catalogue model children and a pretty wife you were bored with because she didn’t let you fuck her rough enough, or in CSIS, or an, an _assassin_ or something, and Stevie gave me _such shit_ for it, she kept saying ‘he’s really just nice, David, you’re just damaged’ or ‘he really just likes you, David, it’s not that complicated,’ or ‘he’s actually a consultant, David, that’s actually a real job,’ but _fuck_ her and definitely fuck you because I was _right_!” David is crying, now, angrily dashing the tears off his cheeks before they can freeze, and Patrick is just standing there, getting colder and colder, watching him pace in the small space. 

He can’t even defend himself. David is right, about all of it, even if he’s not right about the specifics. Patrick had asked him to trust him, to open himself up to the possibility of friendship, partnership, and all of it, and Patrick knew, the whole time, that he wasn’t being open in return. 

“I’m not any of those things, David. Rachel and I aren’t together, and we haven’t been for a year,” he tries, but David’s turned his back.

“You’re not welcome in this restaurant anymore,” David says, quietly. “I don’t want to see you here, or any of the markets, or hassling any of my staff.” Without looking at Patrick again, he passes him and reaches for the door. “I don’t want to see you again at all, Patrick,” and then he’s through the freezer door and Patrick is left standing there, just as trapped and alone as his lizard brain always feared.

***

**Tuesday, December 26, 2017**

Patrick has the worst Christmas of his life, and that includes the one where he broke his left arm in three places wiping out in a skating race when he was 9, the one when he had strep throat and a fever of 41 degrees, and last year, when Rachel kicked him out and he had to move back in with his parents. 

He’s so obviously upset that his mom actually cries on her third tentative attempt to get him to tell her what’s wrong, and he’s never seen her cry except when she’s happy or sentimental. It breaks his last brittle bit of fear holding him back, and he pours the whole story out at the kitchen table. When his dad comes back in to see what’s held Patrick up from helping him shovel Mrs. Yastrzemski’s front walk, he’s bewildered to find them both in tears. Once he gets the whole story, he reaches out to squeeze Patrick’s shoulder.

Patrick has always been a crier (_a sissy_, he thinks, hearing it echo in little Tommy Keller’s voice from grade 2), but he’s never cried this much, this ugly. When he broke up with Rachel he had cried because it was sad, the breakdown of their communication, his secrets, how frustrated they had gotten with each other, all of it. But this is so much worse, because he had been so happy, happier than he thought it was possible to be, with David, even when he was just his friend and business consultant, and it was ruined now, and it was because Patrick had ruined it. 

At any moment of the last six months he could have mustered the courage to say “actually, David, I need to tell you something,” and it would have been hard, and David might have been hurt, but they could have survived it, if he had just told him, trusted him to take on the secret of Patrick’s job the way he had trusted David with his other secrets, revealed laughing in the kitchen or whispered in bed.

Rachel knew about his job, his parents knew about his job, why did David get to know things about him he’d never told anyone, but not about his stupid job he didn’t even like very much? And for all his rationalizing about being emotionally honest about who he really is deep down, Patrick _knew_ that David had trouble trusting people because of how he’d been treated in the past, and Patrick treated him just as badly anyway, because Patrick is a terrible person who destroys the good things in his life because he’s stupid and scared. And _of what_?! Of this, of David finding out and deciding, correctly, that he can’t trust Patrick, and kicking him out of the small but cozy home Patrick had found in his kitchen and his apartment and his heart. But all being scared had gotten him was this pain anyway. 

The only sliver of a silver lining is that at least his parents know, now, about him being gay, and why he’d left Rachel. He’d stopped talking to them in any real way, over the years since the moment he realized what he wanted more than anything in the world was to kiss Andrew Russell. 15 years of hopes and fears and dreams and enthusiasms is a lot to unload over one holiday, but every moment of letting his mom rub his back and telling them the little bits they missed, and how much he loved the work he was doing with David, and everything he could think of that he was proud of or nervous about or dreaming about doing someday felt like another weight lifted off his shoulders. If his heart weren’t so broken over David, he’d feel better than he has in years.

***

**Wednesday, January 31, 2018**

His gym is crowded with the usual droves of people looking for a January fresh start. He runs on a depressing treadmill facing a depressing wall of mirrors in which he can see how much more depressed he looks than any of the new people. They’ve all successfully made it to the fourth week of their fresh start. He’s right back where he was this time last year. The only difference is he’s driving back to an apartment when he leaves the gym instead of living at his parents’. 

His phone rings as he’s about halfway home, staring morosely out the windshield and not even bothering to listen to the radio. When he glances at the caller ID his heart leaps into his throat. 

“David?” he asks as soon as the call connects.

“No. Don’t hang up, though,” Stevie says. “How soon can you get here? Like, could you get here in the next half an hour?” 

Patrick’s brain whirs into activity. David’s sliced his hand open, or David’s got third-degree burns, or David is using again, even though today he’d be three years sober, or David is missing in, he checks the clock, the absolute middle of service. 

“What’s wrong?!” he demands barely glancing over his shoulder before doing a u-turn. 

“Stop freaking out. David’s fine except for his broken heart. I just need your help and I need it fast and I don’t want David to know.” She sounds so uncharacteristically sincere that Patrick starts to speed up. 

“I can be there in 20 minutes.” 

After the most reckless drive of his life, Patrick pulls up to the valet stand 16 minutes later, and pushes past Bob and Eric without saying his customary “scratch it all you want, Bob.” Stevie pulls him aside the second he walks in the door. 

“Listen,” she says, looking him directly in the eye. “I haven’t said anything to David and I get your ‘can’t confirm or deny’ bullshit, but if you’re a Michelin inspector, don’t say anything.” 

Patrick clenches his jaw and tries to control his breathing. “That’s what I thought. Is it true you don’t know any other inspector but your partner?” Patrick nods. “But you’d be able to recognize them by their procedure?” Patrick nods again and feels the tension start to pull his shoulders up to his ears. 

“Okay. Johnson, party of two. Reservation for 7:30. Mr. Johnson arrived at 7 and had a drink at the bar, a vodka soda. His companion arrived at 7:28. They ordered tap water and a half bottle of wine from the exact middle of our list. Johnson has ordered the tasting menu and his companion has ordered the pork shoulder. I just looked over about 2 minutes before you came in, and there is a fork on the floor. Am I right?” Patrick sucks in a deep breath and blows it out again. 

“Yes,” he says, low and firm. He doesn’t even look towards the dining room. “I need to talk to David.” Stevie looks at him hard, but seems to approve of what she sees. 

“I’m going in there to send him on his mandatory smoke break. Wait 5 minutes and then get in the freezer, I’ll send him there next.” She turns on her heel and walks purposefully away. 

Patrick clenches and unclenches his hands, trying not to get ahead of himself. David is the most important thing. David’s star is what David deserves. He is just going to go in there and explain who he is and warn David about the star review, and then he is going to leave. David has made it clear that Patrick has ruined this; Patrick isn’t about to think that he could explain this in a way that would make David take him back. That would be self-serving and desperate, and not at all respectful of David’s obvious need for space. 

Patrick is in love with David, he knows that, he is so in love with him, but he did a bad job of loving David and so this is what he gets now, just the ability to help make sure tonight goes well for David, and that is it. 

He pushes into the kitchen and ignores the noise and heat until he’s in the quiet cold of the freezer, pulling his coat sleeves over his hands. 

About two minutes later, bless Stevie for her efficiency and apparent lack of desire to see him freeze, David pulls open the door shouting “How is it possible you couldn’t find more, Twyla, they’re where they always are!” He lets the door swing shut and turns, and Patrick can already feel himself tearing up. David is just so gorgeous, flushed from the heat of the kitchen and his annoyance at Twyla’s faked ineptitude, and shocked to see Patrick standing there in gym clothes, staring at him like an idiot. 

“What—” David starts, but Patrick cuts him off.

“There’s not a lot of time. Stevie called me. Just listen. I didn’t tell you who I was because I work for Michelin. The night we met I was here reviewing you, and I submitted my review before coming to find you at the market. At Christmas, a week before the party, I had gotten a notification that my review put you in contention for a star. I wanted to tell you, but I was too afraid to lose my job and also, well, of what would happen, what did happen, to us. 

“But Stevie called me tonight because there’s a second inspection team out there, right now. If your kitchen can turn out your absolute best tonight, David, that team is going to have no choice but to recommend you for the first Michelin star ever awarded in Canada.” 

David is still just staring blankly at him. Patrick wants to reach out and take his hands, or his face, anything, so badly, but he just keeps talking. 

“You were right, about me keeping things from you. I couldn’t tell you about my job, but I could have told you about my past. I could have told you about Rachel, and about the boy I wanted to kiss every day of grade 10, and the fact that I hadn’t told my parents about myself, or about you. I could have told you that my life started again the day you handed me my drink at the bar, and that meal really did change my life, and that I have never had a happier six months than I did being your friend and then being with you. I didn’t tell you any of that because I’m a coward, and I’ve always been a coward, but that’s not important. What’s important is what I told Michelin, which is that you have been doing star-quality work here without a doubt. You deserve that star, David, so you should go back out there and take it.” 

David closes his eyes and wraps his arms around his body. Patrick stands still, trying to memorize his beautiful face. He is getting to see David Rose for the last time on the night that he wins his Michelin star. He’d tell his grandkids about this if he thought he was ever going to have grandkids. Maybe his cousin’s kids’ kids would be willing to listen to him someday. David suddenly moves again, shaking out his arms and opening his eyes to look directly at Patrick for the first time since he closed the freezer door six weeks ago. 

“Let me get this straight,” he says, quietly. “You came here to review my restaurant. You flirted with me at the bar and in the alley. You let me kiss you. You _thanked me_ for kissing you. You went home and wrote a review recommending me for the first Michelin star in Canada. You came back out to find me at the fish market. You came here almost every day for four months, and then you let me kiss you again, and then you got caught, and I told you I didn’t want to see you again, and then a month later you’re here because you want to make sure I get my star. And before all of that, you were engaged to a woman even though you thought you were gay, and before that you had a crush on a boy in grade 10. Does that sum up this conversation?” 

Patrick feels stupid hearing it laid out that way. He drops his gaze and stares down at his own sneakers. 

“Yes,” he whispers.

“I have one more question, and this is important.” David steps closer, and Patrick forces himself to look him in the eye again. “Did you mean it when you told me you loved me?” 

David looks as emotionless as Patrick had ever seen him, and he feels the tears he’d been trying to ignore spill over. What’s worse, that he hadn’t been brave enough to say it when he knew David could hear it, or that David _had_ heard it and had thought he was lying this whole time? There is no point in being coy about it anymore. 

“Yes, I meant it. I _mean_ it. I’m so in love with you, David, but that’s not what this is about. You need to go back out there and cook for those people.” David takes the lapels of Patrick’s coat into his hands. 

“Say it again,” he whispers. 

“I love you, David. I’m in love with—” and then David is kissing him, his hands so cold on Patrick’s face, his mouth and tongue so hot.

***

**Monday, March 11, 2019**

Patrick tips his head back to bask in the weak spring sunshine, glad for the coffee warming his hands. It was almost down to freezing overnight, and the metal bench he’s waiting on is not letting him forget it. 

“Working on your tan?” 

Patrick’s face splits into a grin. “I’ve been told I’ll reflect the flash in our wedding pictures if I don’t, and I’ve been warned that Alexis knows of a _very_ natural bronzer.” He opens his eyes to look up at David, smirking down at him. Patrick holds up the cup.

“Thank god, you’d think a group made entirely of restaurant workers would be able to make a better cup of coffee than the average AA meeting.” David sits next to him on the bench and curls his face into Patrick’s scarf. He sneaks his left hand into Patrick’s lap, and Patrick dutifully takes it, chafing it between his a bit and then holding it, trying to warm up the four gold rings David wears every second he’s not actually cooking. They sit there a few minutes longer, until Patrick realizes David hasn’t even taken a sip of his coffee. 

“Hey, baby, are you awake?” He reaches his hand up to slide his thumb across David’s eyebrow, and David hums in response, but doesn’t move. He really isn’t a morning person, and years of sobriety and circumstance have not changed that. Patrick cups his cheek so he can raise David’s face for a kiss. “David, open your eyes, it’s cold out, we should go.”

David’s eyes blink open and he suddenly seems to process that Patrick doesn’t normally pick him up from his meetings. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be talking to suppliers or something? I don’t know what Wendy’s told you, but she’s not your boss, I am.” 

“Technically, David, I am my own boss, since I’m your business partner and not an employee.” He stands, pulling David up off the bench and wrapping him in his arms. “I’m here because I knew no one in there would remember, and I wanted to be the first person to congratulate you on your 1500th day of sobriety.” 

David’s face goes surprised and pleased like it does every time Patrick reminds him that David’s milestones have been marked in his calendar from the day they met. 

“I am so proud of you,” he murmurs into David’s mouth. They kiss for long minutes, coffee going cold in David’s hand, until Patrick really will be late for his supplier phone calls, and he reluctantly disengages. 

“Come on,” he says, squeezing David’s hand, “let’s go, I do have to make my calls, and you have to make some wedding decisions today or you’re going to be the only Michelin-starred chef who has to cater his own wedding.” 

David squeezes back and smirks. “I mean, maybe I should, can anyone else in the entire country even compare?”

Patrick grins up at him. “Not in my expert opinion, no. Not in cooking or anything else.” David rolls his eyes at the sentiment, but his cheeks are rosier than can be explained away by the chilly day, so Patrick thinks the message got through.


End file.
